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an ISD mark 3 with a grav well projector.

Wait, there were ISD IIIs?! With gravity well projectors?

Alexus wrote:Spit on KJA. Have Zahn write all the other novels.

WAY too minimalistic. Zahn's novels are almost a different universe in their outlook than the movies. Everything would be about the Chiss and mysterious large amounts of the galaxy that are filled with deus ex machina that for some reason were ignored for 25,000 years but now are all coming out of the woodwork.

Crown wrote:But what they always fail to take into account, is Luke's response straight after; No, your wrong. It was him.

Yes. This is how utterly fucking pathetic these people are.

Luke does not say that. Mara continues right on with her "you've been fucked up since Byss" speech.

I haven't read all that much of the EU. I have read the Zahn books, and some KJA books.

1. Jedi shouldn't be able to do things we haven't even remotely seen in the movies (throwing a fleet of ISD's out of the solar system.)
2. Slow demise of the Empire
3. Slower Jedi training (This is also a gripe about how fast Luke became proficient enough to defeat Vader, who had trained most of his life).
4. Luke is a wimp. Why does every Jedi he faces (that I have seen so far) seem more powerful than him? He is the son of the Chosen One. Kyp Durron (under influence of Exar Kun) was able to use lightning against Luke, and put him into a coma. This was only after a few days of training if I remember correctly.
5. Luke is supposed to be a Jedi Master by the time he got fried by Kyp, he has no defense against the lightning though.

Off Topic: I can't stand how Obi-Wan can block Dooku's lightning by using a lightsaber. It makes lightning pretty ineffective, and you would think The Force would be more powerful than a lightsaber.

Before listing what I would do, I'd like to list what I dislike about 90% of EU:

1) Most of it takes away from the mystery of the movies. I don't need a backstory of a blond chick who appears for a split second in the widescreen version of ROTJ.

2) Most of it takes place after ROTJ and continues the trend started in the movie (which I think is the weakest of all SW movies): turning Han Solo, the coolest character in SW into a schlemiel. In ANH and TESB, he was was Robin Hood, Rhett Butler, and Peter Blood rolled into one. In ROTJ he was made to play second fiddle to a bunch of teddy bears. In the EU, he comes across like Al Bundy from Married With Children. I wish Lucas would have followed Harrison Ford's advice and killed off Han Solo. Better a noble death fighting the Empire than a future as a henpecked husband.

3) The use of apostraphes (') to give a sort of bogus exotic feel to the names of people, places and things. Leave that crap in Star Trek! OH NO! The Ch'Umps are attacking!

4) A SD called the "Storm Hawk". An SSD called Lusyanka (Nice try at hiding the source of 'Lubyanka'). Jeez

5) An Imperial officer named "Chris Peterson". Jeez again! I understand that the Emperor's clone is named Bill Thomas. Honest.

6) Titles like "Vector Prime" that are better suited for Deep Space Nine.

7) The total lack of the thing that made Star Wars great: The tongue-in-cheek sense of humor, irony and camp. Instead it's oh-so-serious. Look at the way Han and Chewie interact in the movies and compare it to all the pretentious "How dare you question me" bullshit in the EU.

8 ) Almost all of EU sucks.

9) Cloning dead villains or bringing them back as a brother, sister, cousin, whatever. When I was a kid, I would immediately stop reading a comic when they pulled this nonsense. It means they have no new ideas and are insulting the intelligence of the reader.

10) Mara Jade.

11) Han & Leia's kids. Oy veh!

12) Everyone has a Super Star Destroyer mothballed away for when the writer gets lazy and wants to impress someone.

13) Rather than clearing up "plot holes" like that silly columnist Jonah Goldberg claims, EU creates new ones.

If Lucas bashers think the characters in the movies are all one-noters, what does that make the ones from the EU? Borsk Feyla seems constitutionally incapable of being anything other than an asshole, just for the sake of being an asshole. Does he ever do anything good in the novels?

What I would do?

1) Make most of the EU stories without the main characters except as cameos once in a while. Even minor characters would be used sparingly. Stop the species=character bullshit. A decent, humane Hutt for example. Who knows? Maybe the new characters might have more depth if they don't play second fiddle to Han, Luke and Leia. Maybe they won't have the baggage to deal with.

2) Boba Fett and Palpatine, like Francisco Franco are STILL DEAD!

3) Actually, I like minimalism: when something becomes overabundant it is cheapened. In drama, less is more.

4) An editor who will reject any character who copies the dialogue or personality of characters in the movies. Any Corellian who acts like Han Solo should be erased.

5) The stories should take place on planets other than those in the movies. Lucas has good reason to keep returning to Tattooine. Nobody else does.

6) An editor should be assigned to delete any person, place or thing given a stupid name. Names that are too obviously based on real world ones should be changed. Gary Gygax at least rearranged the letters to create new names in his D&D novels. Some asshole actually created a SW character called Vidkun Benedict. Let me guess... he's a traitor!

7) More of the Rebels with their blue shirts, black vests, white helmets. They weren't all caught or killed on Leia's ship. They had cool unis, let's see them win a battle!

Elfdart wrote: What I would do?

1) Make most of the EU stories without the main characters except as cameos once in a while.

Does it really become Star Wars anymore then?

Even minor characters would be used sparingly. Stop the species=character bullshit. A decent, humane Hutt for example. Who knows?

Actually, (and I know you're going to hate this) that actually happened. One book DID have a humane Hutt. But the humane Hutt's are the lower-class ones that get oppressed by the big rich greedy Hutts.

Where was this? Darksaber- a KJA book

3) Actually, I like minimalism: when something becomes overabundant it is cheapened. In drama, less is more.

What? Five Star Destroyers = a sector fleet is RIDICULOUS amounts of minimalism, and we see this in some books. I think grand 10000 vs 10000 ship battles like we see in Destiny's Way or 40,000 vs 30,000 ship battles like in Star by Star are a LOT more dramatic, with the entire sky of Coruscant lit up by the gigantic battle.

Borsk Feyla seems constitutionally incapable of being anything other than an asshole, just for the sake of being an asshole. Does he ever do anything good in the novels?

He blows himself up to kill loads of vong.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:

Crown wrote:But what they always fail to take into account, is Luke's response straight after; No, your wrong. It was him.

Yes. This is how utterly fucking pathetic these people are.

Luke does not say that. Mara continues right on with her "you've been fucked up since Byss" speech.

Some one with the book could simply just quote the scene in question.

There is no doubt in my mind that Luke honestly believed that he faced the Emperor at Byss in VotF, and fuck me if I believe the character who was there over the character who wasn't.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:

Alexus wrote:Spit on KJA. Have Zahn write all the other novels.

WAY too minimalistic. Zahn's novels are almost a different universe in their outlook than the movies. Everything would be about the Chiss and mysterious large amounts of the galaxy that are filled with deus ex machina that for some reason were ignored for 25,000 years but now are all coming out of the woodwork.

*Bullshit*

Zahn has maintained the same level in his books as in the movies (let us not forget that George Lucas himself is a 'minimilist'), unless you think it is intuitive to calculate the volume of the DS in your mind to figure out how many SD you could get.

Furthermore, look at the difference between Jedi depicted by Zahn in TTT and SQ. All of a sudden Luke and Mara can do a lot more things, what changed? Was it the EU-wankary? No. It was the prequels. Zahn has always kept the characters attitudes/abilities as close as possible to the movies. When TTT came out, all he had was the OT, explaining the 'lack-luster' Jedi.

After the prequels, suddenly the Jedi became a bit more spiffy.

Contrast that with the Force powers from hell bullshit in the EU.

I'd have a named jedi/sith get killed in a random firefight. In general the jedi would play the 99th fiddle until there are enough of them.

Make imperial characters who are not just teh evil villains.

No dumb ass super weapons.

More human level stories not all problems have to be galaxy wide most aren't.

-Gunhead

Have t3h 'M3ga m3ga' st4r d3stroyre, 500km l0ng w1th 10,000 turb0laz3rs and 10'000 i0n can0ns and it has a s00perlazer th4t can bl0w up a sunn and it is 1nv1nc1ble!!1

Alexus wrote:

Borsk Feyla seems constitutionally incapable of being anything other than an asshole, just for the sake of being an asshole. Does he ever do anything good in the novels?

He blows himself up to kill loads of vong.

He orders loads of YVH droids, throws the republic support in with the Jedi finally by Star by Star. He gets Karrade to take Leia to Wayland in The Last Command.

Lone_Prodigy wrote:

an ISD mark 3 with a grav well projector.

Wait, there were ISD IIIs?! With gravity well projectors?

There was one experimental one by NJO. It was Bel Iblis' flagship. It had a single gravity well projector (as opposed to four in an Interdictor and none in an ISD II). And it kicked the pants off Vong ships.

Praxis wrote:

Elfdart wrote: What I would do?

1) Make most of the EU stories without the main characters except as cameos once in a while.

Does it really become Star Wars anymore then?

Of course.

Praxis wrote:

Even minor characters would be used sparingly. Stop the species=character bullshit. A decent, humane Hutt for example. Who knows?

Actually, (and I know you're going to hate this) that actually happened. One book DID have a humane Hutt. But the humane Hutt's are the lower-class ones that get oppressed by the big rich greedy Hutts.

Where was this? Darksaber- a KJA book

3) Actually, I like minimalism: when something becomes overabundant it is cheapened. In drama, less is more.

What? Five Star Destroyers = a sector fleet is RIDICULOUS amounts of minimalism, and we see this in some books. I think grand 10000 vs 10000 ship battles like we see in Destiny's Way or 40,000 vs 30,000 ship battles like in Star by Star are a LOT more dramatic, with the entire sky of Coruscant lit up by the gigantic battle.

I love this all or nothing fallacy. If the Empire only has 5 ISDs then they can't cover a sector. First there's hyperdrive, then there's the fact that the Empire has numerous ships aside from ISDs. Just as the USNavy doesn't use its carriers, subs and missile ships for every task at sea, the Empire wouldn't use its mainstay warship for chasing after every smuggler or putting down every revolt.

The best space battle of any movie, TV show or book is still Luke Skywalker and 30 X and Y-wings against the Death Star and a few dozen TIEs. Number and size of ships means less than jack shit when it comes to telling an exciting story. If the Rebels had countless fighters, losing Yavin and Hoth wouldn't have made much difference, would it?

What changes would you make to the Post ROTJ EU?

From day one I will have a format similar to the NJO. One good thing that can be said about it is that it was done by a small number of authors and the plot and setting is known to all and has consistency; also, there is an end goal in sight. The Bantam books suffer from a lack of this. Look at them all as a whole: where's the consistency? TTT starts 5 years after ROTJ, then the next books go tens years after or a few years after, the plots of these books aren't linked at all, the authors are given carte blanche to do whatever they want (more or less), and in the end you've got a mess.

So basically I want something like the NJO's structure from Day one.

Little things to change:

• Second Republic instead of New Republc. That's a good one, Red.
• No fighter wank. Rather, have combined arms where fighters, gunboats, and big ships work in conjunction to down ISDs. None of this '12 against 1'200' if you get my meaning.
• It would be nice if Borsk was not always depicted as a slimeball, but someone with real motivations.
• No minimalism. DE succeeded in showing us a scope and scale to the SW galaxy that we seldom see throughout the Bantam books. That was one thing that was sorely lacking.
• Branch out with multiple secondary characters. The main characters become almost mythic among the plebes. That doesn't mean they're completely ignored.
• There really is no reason to go back to Tattooine.

As for a potential plot: I like the idea of a negotiated peace being settled out in the long run as opposed to the Rebels winning the fight on all fronts. The factionalism of the Empire gives the perfect opportunity to have the Rebels ally themselves with a particular faction. An 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' thing. The war continues and bit by bit the RA stops being a guerrilla force and starts being a conventional one. Instead of the war being between 'The RA and the Empire' it starts being between 'The RA and Zsinj's faction' or 'The RA and Daala' or 'The RA and Isard' etc.

One thing I disliked was Leia not becoming a Jedi until the NJO. She should have been trained from the get-go. Luke should have gone on his quest to find new Jedi ASAP, as well as search for Jedi records. This can be a good sideplot to the main one of the galactic civil war. You can show Leia get rudimentary training by Luke while the two of them go on this quest, using Leia's Senatorial privileges to visit worlds and gather information. They can go on another Corellian Corvette. Han can go with them, though it might be interesting to see them split up and him concentrating on being a General (at least at the start). The main war thus falls into the purview of the Admirals and Generals and soldiers, while the two Jedis seek out the resources to restart the Jedi order.

I also wonder if there aren't any masters or knights in hiding a la Obi-wan and Yoda. Or if Vader's purge was really that successful? People like C'Baoth are still around.

Any other ideas? Does it sound good?

Crown wrote:Zahn has maintained the same level in his books as in the movies (let us not forget that George Lucas himself is a 'minimilist'), unless you think it is intuitive to calculate the volume of the DS in your mind to figure out how many SD you could get.

Ok, the twenty-five thousand figure assigned to the total Star Destroyer fleet was bullshit.

The size of the fleet that Thrawn was personally commanding - and really, a CinC ought to have been directing overall strategy and his subordinates directing the battle-by-battle - was bullshit.

Two hundred Dreadnoughts as a major threat is bullshit.

A few tens of thousands of clone cylinders as a major threat is bullshit.

Your little rant about the Death Star is essentially "let him throw out inconvienent evidence." Sorry, but the issues presented in the film are presented in the film. It helps maintain proper SoD and plausibility if novels are actually commiserate with the scale presented in the films and appropriate to a galactic civilization.

Mike has it perfectly on his site. The Death Star is equivalent to hundreds of millions of ships, and the movies take place on the rim of the galaxy against a numerically insignificant insurgency. If you want to write books in the heat of galactic civil war after five years, you ought to observe these things and take them into consideration.

Crown wrote:[snip]

I don't really give a fuck about the Jedi issue.

Elfdart wrote:I love this all or nothing fallacy. If the Empire only has 5 ISDs then they can't cover a sector. First there's hyperdrive, then there's the fact that the Empire has numerous ships aside from ISDs. Just as the USNavy doesn't use its carriers, subs and missile ships for every task at sea, the Empire wouldn't use its mainstay warship for chasing after every smuggler or putting down every revolt.

Then why is that exactly what they do in the movies? They chase down the Falcon with a pair of Star Destroyers, they chase down the Tantive IV with a Star Destroyer, a fleet of Star Destroyers - including a massive capital ship - crushed a rebellion which has no armor, a few thousand troops, no ships, and a single base on some shitty world. Star Destroyers chase the Falcon down again...

Y'know, with patterns like this, I might begin to think that Star Destroyers are used to chase down smugglers, criminals, and to squash little hideaways (recall that upon seeing the recon data from the probot, Ozzel said it could be smugglers). The films certainly do not show the alternative you act like.

We never see the Empire attack a real military.

Elfdart wrote:The best space battle of any movie, TV show or book is still Luke Skywalker and 30 X and Y-wings against the Death Star and a few dozen TIEs. Number and size of ships means less than jack shit when it comes to telling an exciting story. If the Rebels had countless fighters, losing Yavin and Hoth wouldn't have made much difference, would it?

Exactly. So why are you claiming that smaller will make a better story, then turning around and saying that size is irrelevent to the story.

SoD and realism and consistency should be observed and encouraged. And I'm sure the thousands-and-thousands-of-ships ROTS battle will be incredible.

Its just fucking stupid for a civilization of over fifty million worlds and quintillions of inhabitants capable of building a Death Star would have such piddly resources.

Before i'd start to re-write the EU i would try to create a guide on how to write SW-novels.

That means issues like size and scope, what kind of damage is supposed to be caused by weapons, that it is okay to create your own worlds, simply the basics of the fictional universe.

As a second step i would create some kind of expose. What happens over the next ten years and when exactely - and then i would fill that time-frame in chronological order.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:

Elfdart wrote:I love this all or nothing fallacy. If the Empire only has 5 ISDs then they can't cover a sector. First there's hyperdrive, then there's the fact that the Empire has numerous ships aside from ISDs. Just as the USNavy doesn't use its carriers, subs and missile ships for every task at sea, the Empire wouldn't use its mainstay warship for chasing after every smuggler or putting down every revolt.

Then why is that exactly what they do in the movies? They chase down the Falcon with a pair of Star Destroyers, they chase down the Tantive IV with a Star Destroyer, a fleet of Star Destroyers - including a massive capital ship - crushed a rebellion which has no armor, a few thousand troops, no ships, and a single base on some shitty world. Star Destroyers chase the Falcon down again...

Did Vader know that the Rebels on Hoth were just a bunch of fighters and support crews? No. He would have been very stupid to go in with a few light ships. For all he knew, the Rebels might have had heavy ships in the area. The fact that he brought ISDs and an SSD to Hoth doesn't mean that such overwhelming force is used on every smuggler or insurrection. Hoth was most likely a special case because it included the Rebels who blew up the Death Star. The name Skywalker might have rung a bell, too.

The other instances are most likely special cases, too. The blockade runner in ANH just happened to be carrying the plans to the Death Star. Same for the Falcon in ANH when it took off from Mos Eisely. In TESB, it's obvious that Vader's first priority is catching Luke Skywalker. By finding the Falcon, he either hopes Luke is on board or thinks he can use Han and Leia as hostages to lure him out. He doesn't order his fleet into the asteroid field just to find Rebels.

A real world equivalent would be that the US Navy's carriers, missile ships and subs generally don't go chasing smugglers. Now if one of those smuggler boats just happened to be carrying say, Osama, and Osama had the plans for building a hydrogen bomb he had just stolen from the Pentagon -yes, they would.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:Y'know, with patterns like this, I might begin to think that Star Destroyers are used to chase down smugglers, criminals, and to squash little hideaways (recall that upon seeing the recon data from the probot, Ozzel said it could be smugglers). The films certainly do not show the alternative you act like.

Because regular smugglers and small mobs of malcontents and rioters on far flung planets aren't the focus of attention in SW.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:We never see the Empire attack a real military.

The Rebels who blew away two Death Stars and several of the Empire's larger warships seem real enough to me. I guess it's a matter of opinion.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:

Elfdart wrote:]The best space battle of any movie, TV show or book is still Luke Skywalker and 30 X and Y-wings against the Death Star and a few dozen TIEs. Number and size of ships means less than jack shit when it comes to telling an exciting story. If the Rebels had countless fighters, losing Yavin and Hoth wouldn't have made much difference, would it?

Exactly. So why are you claiming that smaller will make a better story, then turning around and saying that size is irrelevent to the story.

Cut the crap. I was refuting Praxis' point that more ships= more drama. Compare the space battles at Yavin and Endor, and I'm sure most people will think that's nonsense.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:SoD and realism and consistency should be observed and encouraged. And I'm sure the thousands-and-thousands-of-ships ROTS battle will be incredible.

Maybe it will; maybe it won't. I won't be counting ships, though.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:Its just fucking stupid for a civilization of over fifty million worlds and quintillions of inhabitants capable of building a Death Star would have such piddly resources.

What's piddly about 25000 huge warships and countless "smaller" (VSDs for example, aren't exactly small) vessels -most of which can go from one end of the galaxy to the other in a matter of hours? It's not just hyperdrive that makes the need for wank-a-million ISD fleets unnecessary. The simple fact is that most of the Empire, like most inhabitants of any empire aren't interested in bucking the system. Most people go along with whatever is given to them. Judging from what the Rebels were able to muster for Endor (talk about "piddly resources"!), the people of the GFFA are no different. Besides, empires usually don't occupy every population center they hold. Local stooges and quislings do most of that. The big guns are reserved for key areas or those areas the local satrap can't handle.

Spartan wrote: 9. Have Kyle Katarn teach a long side Luke at the Jedi academy on Courscant.

New Mace Windu, check.

I might in fact, make him the thrust of some more novels (I've only got the first Katarn novella. )

The Vong will appear, and they will get collossaly curb stomped by the Second Republic in the first engagement, remaining a minor threat at best.

Incidentally, for the Second Empire's Jedi Order, I would consider throwing open the floor - employ a good editor or ten, technical supervisory staff {Let's see Dr Curtis Saxton, Michael Wong, Wayne Poe, and various others} and let people submit fanfiction not using major characters {except in cameo roles} for canonisation. You'd get a whole pile of Mary Sue shite, but the contents of this board's fanfic archive dictates that you'd get some good stuff. (Hell, if it weren't for the crossover aspect, you could publish starcrossed alone as a trilogy) Such things would be encouraged to be small scale, like The Phantom Menace, for unsolicited submissions, then get the very best stuff to be edited and published in anthology format, making the rest of the stuff available on line on a system like Hyperspace with a free trial period.

To encourage folks, getting published in the first anthology would result in being comissioned for further works. It would be an exceptional way to get exclusive talent on board.

I might not mind the Vong appearing, but make the Imperial Remnant far more pro-active. I.e. the teams working with the Jedi would include Imperial espionage personnel. Their whole mission is to feed data back to the Remnant, to improve Imperial tactics and training.

The Remnant would also be keeping tabs on all the smaller wars within their territories, and be far more unified under the different admirals. Those admirals might not be as obedient to Pellaeon, but within their sphere of authority, the people are happy, productive, and not dredging up old feuds.

The best way to introduce the pro-active Remnant, would have been during the Vong attack on Coruscant. When the jedikids are heading to a single ship to transmit the gravity jammer, the Imperial agent sends out a signal, and changes the flight path of the shuttle.

The jedikids ask WTF, and he explains that there is another ship coming in with bigger gravity generators, that should do a better job.

The Imperial fleet arrives, and there are over a dozen Executor class SSDs in it. Their firepower slams into the Vong flank, and doesn't have to worry about hitting freighters. When the shuttle lands on board, the data is transmitted to the other ships, and their gravity cores are transmitting the jammer signals.

The Imperial ships as well are using full knowledge of Vong defenses and weapons, and are chewing up the whole Vong fleet. The few surviving Vong ships turn tail and run as fast as they can.

Result - Coruscant's defenses have been hammered; the Senators had called up ships so they could run away; and the Jedi and the Imperials saved the day.

The original Vong strategy of stirring up the worlds, and getting them to fight each other would still work well, forcing the NR to divert ships all over the place, and wearing down the military. The Vong then use various chemical and biological attacks to make the populations on different worlds either more aggressive (forcing the deployment of troops to keep the riots down), or lazier, reducing production.

By using their own FTL capability, they can bypass normal patrol routes, and they can use their dovin basals to interdict cargo routes, making it easier for pirates to spring up. When the NR comes to investigate, they manage to take out the pirates, but the YV merely learn about the weapons and tactics of their future opponents.

By spreading the fleet, and forcing work slowdowns, they could strips the areas of ships, reducing the potential fleet they would have to face. Bypassing the patrol routes allows them to smuggle items past Customs, allowing spice addiction to spread. Increasing piracy reduces trade as well, further shutting down the galaxy.

The Jedi can only see the galaxy slowly devolving into chaos, and they cannot detect the Vong either.

The Imperial Remnant stay solid, but YV interference keeps border empires stirred up, to keep the IR from growing by absorbing the smaller neighbors with trade and assistance.

During the invasion, the Vong also infect uninhabited worlds through the galaxy to produce their ships, so that the NR has to play a constant job of cleaning them out.

So the YV spend ~20 years splitting and shutting down the NR, and when the finally attack, the NR cracks. But eventually, the shipyards on the far side of the galaxy slowly start coming online, as the contact with the YV fleet teaches them how to fight. When they use the same tactics, and defeat YV pirates throughout the galaxy, the different races start to realize they have been suckered, and begin to band together.

Still slow, so it does take time, but the NR pulls itself back together to fight them. Unfortunately, it doesn't heal the rifts that developed between the empires, causing the whole galaxy to fracture.

And healing the fractured galaxy, that is another story.

One thing that I would do that I haven't seen mentioned yet is before any manuscripts are made I'd commission someone like Saxton to map out the movies to provide a baseline to authors as to what is possible and expected in the Star Wars universe. This would hopefully cut down on minimalism, five mile SSDs, shield globes, fighter wank, etc.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:Ok, the twenty-five thousand figure assigned to the total Star Destroyer fleet was bullshit.

The size of the fleet that Thrawn was personally commanding - and really, a CinC ought to have been directing overall strategy and his subordinates directing the battle-by-battle - was bullshit.

Something is strange ... oh what could it be ... oh yes now I remember;

1 million clones were the 'Grand Army' of the Republic.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:Two hundred Dreadnoughts as a major threat is bullshit.

The entire trilogy was on the NR having a lack of ships to adequetly proteect their territory, in case you missed it. Also at the end of the first book they lost even more ships, in case you missed it. So 200 would present a threat to them since Thrawn could still protect his territory and launch raids into the NR's.

Oh and I nearly forgot;

1 million clones were the 'Grand Army' of the Republic.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:A few tens of thousands of clone cylinders as a major threat is bullshit.

I can't remember the exact number (I thought the description of Mt Tantis was leaning to 100,000 Sparti cylinders), but anyway lets take the 10,000 clones on the off chance I'm wrong. Did you forget that they were out putting 10,000 clones per week? Meaning that in 2 years Thrawn had enough clones for the same time it would take the Kamino cloners to produce in 10.

That would be the 1 million clones that were the 'Grand Army' of the Republic.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:Your little rant about the Death Star is essentially "let him throw out inconvienent evidence." Sorry, but the issues presented in the film are presented in the film. It helps maintain proper SoD and plausibility if novels are actually commiserate with the scale presented in the films and appropriate to a galactic civilization.

Mike has it perfectly on his site. The Death Star is equivalent to hundreds of millions of ships, and the movies take place on the rim of the galaxy against a numerically insignificant insurgency. If you want to write books in the heat of galactic civil war after five years, you ought to observe these things and take them into consideration.

Wow, you do enjoy your little strawman's don't you Primy? What I originally said was;

Crown wrote:Zahn has maintained the same level in his books as in the movies (let us not forget that George Lucas himself is a 'minimilist'), unless you think it is intuitive to calculate the volume of the DS in your mind to figure out how many SD you could get.

You've done jack all to refute that but throw some amazing red herrings and put up a nice strawman. Let me spell it out for you;

When the creator of the universe we are talking about is himself a 'minimalist' how the hell can you turn around and say that Zahn's books are 'almost a different universe in their outlook than the movies'? Justify this statement.

I have no problem at looking at the DS and saying; well quite clearly the Empire could have X amount of ships at least based on the volume of the DS. But we are talking about a universe where one out of the way insignificant planet is a casus beli for the Clone Wars. Face it, we've never been shown two titanic powers battling it out in the movies, the battles are always snug and small, with a few characters having a disproportionate affect on the galactic timeline. That's the outlook of the movies, and lets face it the outlook of Zahn's books.

You might enjoy thousands of ships at one battle, and I don't fault you for it, but it certainly isn't the 'feel' presented in the movies (the OT and to another extent the PT).

Illuminatus Primus wrote:

Crown wrote:[snip]

I don't really give a fuck about the Jedi issue.

Fair enough, my bad.

Crown wrote:Something is strange ... oh what could it be ... oh yes now I remember;

1 million clones were the 'Grand Army' of the Republic.

Therefore we ought to ignore the fact that it is stupid and that the Death Star represents a canoncial backing for realistic scaling?

I'm quite astounded you're presented both sets of evidence in the canon, know the background information, and are whining that we ought to skew realism and the set supporting it in favor of the minimalism, no matter who churned it out? What kind of silly Golden Mean is that?

Crown wrote:The entire trilogy was on the NR having a lack of ships to adequetly proteect their territory, in case you missed it. Also at the end of the first book they lost even more ships, in case you missed it. So 200 would present a threat to them since Thrawn could still protect his territory and launch raids into the NR's.

Look, stop with the apologetics. We've all seen concrete, undeniable proof that the galaxy can churn out the equivalent of millions of ISDs per month. Wartime production should've made the Dark Force look like insignificant.

The entire Dark Force is much less volumnous and much less massive than HIMS Executor, which was constructed in a month or two.

Crown wrote:1 million clones were the 'Grand Army' of the Republic.

So we should favor this side and claim that it shouldn't be otherwise?

You're a flipped out ideologue with an ax to grind because you don't like the trash I've said about Zahn. Well too bad, you're being very unreasonable.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:A few tens of thousands of clone cylinders as a major threat is bullshit.

Crown wrote:I can't remember the exact number (I thought the description of Mt Tantis was leaning to 100,000 Sparti cylinders), but anyway lets take the 10,000 clones on the off chance I'm wrong. Did you forget that they were out putting 10,000 clones per week? Meaning that in 2 years Thrawn had enough clones for the same time it would take the Kamino cloners to produce in 10.

Yes? The canon presents a Coruscant that, if .0001% were drafted, it would overwhelm the clones that Thrawn churned out?

Crown wrote:That would be the 1 million clones that were the 'Grand Army' of the Republic.

What kind of logic is this? "George said something stupid, so when Timothy Zahn says something stupid (and it was before GL did, mind you) it isn't stupid"? Am I understanding correctly?

Its not an either or thing. They're both stupid, and at all times possible the literature should strive for the more intelligent presentation in the canon, not the other side. I really can't believe you're arguing what you claim to be.

Crown wrote:Wow, you do enjoy your little strawman's don't you Primy? What I originally said was;

Crown wrote:Zahn has maintained the same level in his books as in the movies (let us not forget that George Lucas himself is a 'minimilist'), unless you think it is intuitive to calculate the volume of the DS in your mind to figure out how many SD you could get.

You've done jack all to refute that but throw some amazing red herrings and put up a nice strawman. Let me spell it out for you;

When the creator of the universe we are talking about is himself a 'minimalist' how the hell can you turn around and say that Zahn's books are 'almost a different universe in their outlook than the movies'? Justify this statement.

Simple, you're nitpicking one incident over the Death Star, the description of the Empire as galaxy-wide, the thousands and thousands of warship in the ROTS battle, the presentation of Coruscant in the films, the presentation of the Executor in the films, the presentation of the number of worlds in the Empire...

Just look at this very site, and its presentation of the clear canonical evidence which predominantly shows the Empire as a juggernaught almost beyond comprehension. You choose a single factoid and take it alone, and say that suddenly what amounts to a minority of a single command ship's mass in the Imperial Navy ought to be presented as a force to be reckonned with, that a tiny fraction of less than one percent of the population of a single world ought to be presented as an unprecedented threat, and on and on. Why? Because GL said the clone army had 1.2 million troops.

If you think you could produce a cogent argument from a single factoid that makes Timothy Zahn's novels well representative of what is presented in the films, you ought to have told some Trekkies back in the height of the vs. debate, because they sure could have used that over what Mike's website presents with the canon.

The use of a single factoid to the exclusion of all other data is nitpicking, buddy. It alone does not make Zahn's work representative in scale of GL's canon, especially at the time it was written.

Crown wrote:I have no problem at looking at the DS and saying; well quite clearly the Empire could have X amount of ships at least based on the volume of the DS. But we are talking about a universe where one out of the way insignificant planet is a casus beli for the Clone Wars. Face it, we've never been shown two titanic powers battling it out in the movies, the battles are always snug and small, with a few characters having a disproportionate affect on the galactic timeline. That's the outlook of the movies, and lets face it the outlook of Zahn's books.

So what.

Zahn chose to write a book set in full galactic civil war between participants occupying and controlling large fraction of an entire spiral galaxy. If he did not account for this more appropriately, that's his fault, and he ought to have. That's all I'm saying.

If he wanted to write about another crisis or something and leave pan-galactic war to someone else, he should have.

Crown wrote:You might enjoy thousands of ships at one battle, and I don't fault you for it, but it certainly isn't the 'feel' presented in the movies (the OT and to another extent the PT).

Subjective feeling over hard fact is not a justification which flies. You may argue that no author was going to do that work, and you may be right. The fact of the matter is objective evidence is presented in the films, especially the films available when Zahn wrote his novels, which in comparison to the plot devices he used makes for a scarcely believable stress on suspension of disbelief.