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Darth Hoth wrote:I freely confess to not being a great expert on navies, or even the military in general. I am also no expert on ancient military history, so I cannot say for certain how relevant ancient navies should be to compare to the Imperial Navy. However, with fleets on the scale the Empire has (thousands of Executors alone in the Sector Fleets only, if WEG is to be believed) a single ship simply should not be that important. Executor carries, just to cut an arbitrary figure, perhaps a millionth of the Navy's officers. I refuse to believe that the officers aboard that single ship were such a great part of the Empire's best talent that the Navy suffered a measurable drop in overall efficiency because they lost them.

I'd like to point out two things. One: you are assuming that because standard Imperial doctrine says that such and such a number of ships exist for every system and so on above to Sector and Over-Sector level, that there must be such and such a number of ships total. That, frankly, is a bunch of bullshit. Doctrine and paper-strength is all fine, but the reality is hardly ever up to matching that. I cannot presently remember, but there are several EU book instances where it mentions the Empire only having so many ships for certain low-key areas. I recall how the Shelsha sector had only the ISD Reprisal; another sector was protected by a trio of antiquated Dreadnoughts; so on and so forth. To imagine that the Empire had access to hundreds of Super Star Destroyers is laughable. At most, perhaps a dozen Executor-class SSDs were constructed, only one Sovereign-class was constructed, and only one Eclipse-class; and all were destroyed. And to try and use the Dark Empire Sourcebook (which is old and antiquated in itself) would be foolhardy. I believe the issue of SSDs will be resolved once the new Essential SW Military book comes out. Or we can at least hope so.

Secondly; can we get back to the topic of this thread please?

Why laughable? WEG super star destroyer is anything from heavy destroyer (Allegiance) to superdreadnought (Eclipse). It's not like he's saying there are thousands of Executors.

Cue massive argument between me and Thanas, in 3, 2, 1....

fractalsponge1 wrote:Why laughable? WEG super star destroyer is anything from heavy destroyer (Allegiance) to superdreadnought (Eclipse). It's not like he's saying there are thousands of Executors.

Cue massive argument between me and Thanas, in 3, 2, 1....

Oh, I recognize the possible existence of hundreds and perhaps even thousands of heavy destroyers like the Allegiance-class and upwards of an extra thousand meters in length of a normal ISD, but those, while larger than an ISD, don't count as SSDs in my opinion.

^Re SSDs: Me neither, just pointing out WEG's nomenclature.

But, really, even for larger ships, why are a few hundred of them absurd? There are no obvious manufacturing limitations, and the sources are mostly ambiguous about it anyway, so you can't say there's high-level canon that explicitly bars the possibility of dozens, hundreds, or even low 4-digit numbers of 3+km ships. I really don't mean for this to turn into a rehash of old arguments about ISD role, I promise .

Also, the issue of paper OOB vs actual strengths is quite valid, but Imperial Sourcebook also doesn't document a lot of other formations known to exist, and is itself somewhat suspect by being (in universe) a Rebel publication. Forces retained under central control, like Azure Hammer, Black Sword, Giel's and Vader's fleets, Scourge Squadron, etc. are not covered.

And when you think about it, ~1600 ships for a typical sector isn't that much. There are 52 million local jurisdictions that count as significant units, and almost two million full member states of the Empire. At a thousand sectors, the theoretical combined Sector Group total levels out at a single Corvette or better for every 32 worlds/habitats/etc. Never mind there are literally billions of barren systems to police and sweep for Rebels and criminals. Imperial Customs, if you assume 1 ship (laughable when you consider the traffic volume at somewhere like Coruscant) per constituency, will have dozens of millions of small ships.

fractalsponge1 wrote:^Re SSDs: Me neither, just pointing out WEG's nomenclature.

But, really, even for larger ships, why are a few hundred of them absurd? There are no obvious manufacturing limitations, and the sources are mostly ambiguous about it anyway, so you can't say there's high-level canon that explicitly bars the possibility of dozens, hundreds, or even low 4-digit numbers of 3+km ships. I really don't mean for this to turn into a rehash of old arguments about ISD role, I promise .

Also, the issue of paper OOB vs actual strengths is quite valid, but Imperial Sourcebook also doesn't document a lot of other formations known to exist, and is itself somewhat suspect by being (in universe) a Rebel publication. Forces retained under central control, like Azure Hammer, Black Sword, Giel's and Vader's fleets, Scourge Squadron, etc. are not covered.

And when you think about it, ~1600 ships for a typical sector isn't that much. There are 52 million local jurisdictions that count as significant units, and almost two million full member states of the Empire. At a thousand sectors, the theoretical combined Sector Group total levels out at a single Corvette or better for every 32 worlds/habitats/etc. Never mind there are literally billions of barren systems to police and sweep for Rebels and criminals. Imperial Customs, if you assume 1 ship (laughable when you consider the traffic volume at somewhere like Coruscant) per constituency, will have dozens of millions of small ships.

Going by ship number vs planet number, has anyone once comapred USN fleet strength vs harbour towns in the USA ? Not every inhabited location will have a ship equivalent.

Local security in the SW galaxy could be handled by a TIE squadron or two for low-impact worlds, not necessarily fleet or coast guard unit equivalents.

The book included with the TIE fighter game has the lead character (Stele?) experience something like 'ISD jumps in, releases TIEs, jumps to next system, drops off stortrooper patrol, next system take old TIE patrol onboard, next system, etc..." while onboard one as a mechanic, so the high mobility of Sw ships can be used to reduce the numbers required to maintain local order.

fractalsponge1 wrote:Cue massive argument between me and Thanas, in 3, 2, 1....

Why bother? Neither of us is going to change our minds anyway.


As for Darth Hoth, the warlordism exhibited by Zaarin et al would be another argument against the Imperial officer corps being somewhat the example of discipline, cohesion etc.

Your analogy does not take scale into account. A single low-end planet in Star Wars (Bakura) has a much larger space fleet than the sea fleet of Spain in the 1800s

It doesn't, but keep displaying your ignorance.

, and there are millions at least of planets in the galaxy. Commanding and unifying millions of ships which have speeds in the millions of c, spread out across a galaxy and receiving nonsensical and/or contradictory orders from various political authorities is not comparable to brokering a truce between the captains of a few dozen wooden vessels. The Imperial Navy has an entirely different structure, scale, and mission profile, making the comparison incomplete at best. The politics of the scenarios are also very different; the Empire is/was the Galactic hegemon and has/had no external threats worthy of notice above perhaps the Sectorial level (Regional at the most) excepting the subversion of the Rebel Alliance, while Spain at the time was a fading power under attack by major powers.

Really? Because you say so? There is not a single example of such a breakdown in history on any scale. The closest you could come to is the disintegration of the Roman Empire and even that took over 60 years. And even there, with the capital city lost etc., the Roman Empire did not disintegrate into warlordism in such a style.

You have got nothing to explain why so many captains essentially carved out little fiefdoms. You have got nothing to explain why we have, even within the deep core, so many feuding factions except the character of the people leading them, and if one looks at them they are hardly shining examples of officers. The simple fact is that the loyal and good-intentioned officers did not make it to the top. That is a serious institutional flaw and cannot just be handwaved away.

Explain Teradoc, Zsinji, Harssk, Delvardus etc. All of them are power hungry sociopaths, hardly what one would expect in charge of Imperial units in a society that has a sane military.

We should probably also keep in mind that like all high-tech militaries, the Imperial Navy probably suffered disproportionate effective losses when the logistics network got fragmented. Once the major shipyard/dockyard worlds were no longer available, even relatively minor damage might finish a large ship as a fighting unit. For all we know, the Imperial Remnant might have had thousands of damaged hulls that it couldn't refit. Not all of it needs to have been destroyed in battle.

---

Anyway, are we done with the Executor officer loss argument? Anyone else going to offer numbers as to why this should influence the efficiency of a galactic military?

I think it is worth noting that Palpatine and several high ranking Imperial officials (Pestage and Isard) were actively working to sabotage any serious attempts to produce a viable leadership post-Endor. I don't think this really has any historical parallel out there and could, I guess if you're feeling generous, explain the sudden collapse into warlordism.

Thanas wrote:You have got nothing to explain why so many captains essentially carved out little fiefdoms. You have got nothing to explain why we have, even within the deep core, so many feuding factions except the character of the people leading them

25 millenia of grudges and vendettas, commercial/political rivalries and low-level conflict between 52 million worlds that just erupted into Civil War twice in living memory isn't enough? It's not like the Empire was around and stable for 300 years before the collapse. Or that it was particularly homogenous with only a few constituent bits. Ch'in instead of Rome, perhaps? And there is the "designed to fail without Palpatine" and "manipulation from the shadows" bits people have already mentioned. Questionable perhaps, but it's out there.

Still, do we have a good idea of how much of the military actually collapsed into warlordism? How many independent factions can you count? Zsinj, Teradoc, Harsk, Delvardus, Kaine, Krennel, Drommel, Thrawn, Greater Maldrood, Eriadu, Shadowspawn, maybe a dozen more? So ~two dozen major commands worth, maybe? If you really want to buy wholesale into the published numbers, very few of them had too much better than a few sector groups worth of ships. Basically none of them had any significant chunk of the richest and most populous areas of the galaxy. Some of them probably had semi-autonomous plenipotentiary authority to begin with, like Kaine. At the very least, he and Zsinj weren't your Saturday-morning cartoon villains. Considering a thousand sector commands, plus who knows how many roving, regional/oversector, and central command formations, it's not like every bit of the entire military imploded and tried to kill/dominate/enslave/went apeshit on everything around it. And even after the death of Thrawn and the collapse of his confederation, the remnants could organize enough to retake Coruscant and force the New Republic to abandon the Core Worlds.

Making a few psycopath warlords for flavor is fine and all, but there must be trillions of men under arms that in combination must vastly outnumber the warlords; the rest of the military can't have all went apeshit crazy. Palpatine was supposed to have reserved a significant chunk of the military. Maybe that (in universe) explains why you hear nothing about the large reserve forces like Azure Hammer. That's a major problem with the emptiness of the chronology. Where did the central forces go, what were the Core Worlds doing, etc. The Atlas was a start, but there are still many gaps. At what point do you decide the existing numbers are all off? Like the 3 million clones BS. That's published, but manifestly idiotic. Thrawn couldn't possibly have taken over a third of the galaxy and held it with his flying column and a few hundred Dreadnaughts, and the known warlord factions that supposedly submitted to his authority don't have enough power to do it in combination. Maybe a lot of the military that Palpatine didn't hide was just poorly organized and bereft of direction from the center, frantically trying to keep everything together, but otherwise not doing much farther afield until someone like Thrawn or reborn Palpatine came around. I can hope for a major retcon and rationalization, but I'm not particularly hopeful that we'll get a good resolution to it.

Vympel wrote:Pfft, fuck Thrawn. It's easy to pish posh and belittle the achievements, temperament and skill of the supreme commander of the Imperial military when he's dead and can't defend himself from your scurrilous, jealous attacks.

Was Vader supreme commander of the Imperial military? I mean, was he actually in the chain of command, rather than being detached as Palpatine's man on the scene when needed?

Remember, the way Vader acted when he did hold command (or at least power of life and death over commanders) suggests that the Imperial Navy would not remember him as the galaxy's greatest boss. I think Thrawn was well within his rights to paint Vader as the sort of guy who'd casually murder an officer over failures, even if that's an exaggeration.

Havok wrote:

Vympel wrote:Pfft, fuck Thrawn.

Exactly.
Hey I look at art, I understand an entire species and their military strategy now! Hur hur!

Me, I think he just sat there "meditating" and reading actual intelligence briefings, then made up a bullshit explanation based on art to justify his deductions after the fact. Thrawn was a really secretive bastard, and trying to lay false trails for people who attempted to deduce how he could analyze an enemy's strategic weaknesses so well would be exactly his style.

Formless wrote:They were, and to say that the EU is smearing Vader is like trying to burn a turd.

Nitpick: you do realize that there are entire cultures that rely on doing this for heat, right?

I have to agree with fractal's statement there. There is no clear canon explanation (yet) for what all was exactly happening to the Imperial military between Endor, Thrawn's campaign, and the eventual peace agreement between the Imperial Remnant and the New Republic. We just don't know. So for now conjecture is all we can come up with and to argue over this subject based only on conjecture will ultimately lead us no where.

However, if you are trying to find a RL historical example for the warlordism that consumed the post-Endor Empire, look no further than practically all of Chinese history. Particularly after the fall of the Manchu dynasty in the 1920s and 1930s. At any one time there were upwards of hundreds of miniature areas, regions, and sometimes large cities that were under the control of various different military warlords who mustered what power they could. Like how Pellaeon rallied the remaining Moffs and warlords into the Imperial Remnant, Chiang-Kai Shek rallied the various warlords into the Kuomintang to fight off the Japanese and later the communists (ultimately failing and forming a funnily similar "remnant" of Nationalist Chinese on Taiwan).

Simon_Jester wrote:Was Vader supreme commander of the Imperial military? I mean, was he actually in the chain of command, rather than being detached as Palpatine's man on the scene when needed?

As of ANH, Vader had no official rank or title within the Empire beyond being the Emperor's emissary. I believe Vader is called Supreme Commander in Dark Empire , and on pg. 47 of the Imperial Sourcebook, we have a communique from Ars Dangor addressing the Grand Moffs and military: "You are to bow to Lord Vader's wishes as though they were the Emperor's own, extending him every possible assistance he may require in the completion of his task" as a result of the Battle of Yavin.

Simon_Jester wrote:

Vympel wrote:Pfft, fuck Thrawn. It's easy to pish posh and belittle the achievements, temperament and skill of the supreme commander of the Imperial military when he's dead and can't defend himself from your scurrilous, jealous attacks.

Was Vader supreme commander of the Imperial military? I mean, was he actually in the chain of command, rather than being detached as Palpatine's man on the scene when needed?

Do is it matter? If I could walk into the Pentagon and start giving orders that everyone would follow or hop on the closest F-14 and fly out to a carrier group and retask it without anyone questioning my orders, I could call my self anything I want. I mean he is in every way that matters, Supreme Commander. He probably even has a higher pay grade.

Remember, the way Vader acted when he did hold command (or at least power of life and death over commanders) suggests that the Imperial Navy would not remember him as the galaxy's greatest boss. I think Thrawn was well within his rights to paint Vader as the sort of guy who'd casually murder an officer over failures, even if that's an exaggeration.

And again, Vader only whacked two guys, and one we are fairly certain was someone that had repeatedly failed Vader. There was nothing casual about it. The EU makes it seem like the Executor (irony?) was the ship to be on if you wanted advancement because Vader was bumping off the command staff left and right. That is just not true.

Havok wrote:

Vympel wrote:Pfft, fuck Thrawn.

Exactly.
Hey I look at art, I understand an entire species and their military strategy now! Hur hur!

Me, I think he just sat there "meditating" and reading actual intelligence briefings, then made up a bullshit explanation based on art to justify his deductions after the fact. Thrawn was a really secretive bastard, and trying to lay false trails for people who attempted to deduce how he could analyze an enemy's strategic weaknesses so well would be exactly his style.

That would be a great explanation if anyone, anywhere ever actually incorporated it.

TC Pilot wrote:

Simon_Jester wrote:Was Vader supreme commander of the Imperial military? I mean, was he actually in the chain of command, rather than being detached as Palpatine's man on the scene when needed?

As of ANH, Vader had no official rank or title within the Empire beyond being the Emperor's emissary. I believe Vader is called Supreme Commander in Dark Empire , and on pg. 47 of the Imperial Sourcebook, we have a communique from Ars Dangor addressing the Grand Moffs and military: "You are to bow to Lord Vader's wishes as though they were the Emperor's own, extending him every possible assistance he may require in the completion of his task" as a result of the Battle of Yavin.

Even then, though, that's because he's being given plenipotentiary power to deal with a specific threat, not because he's the Imperial equivalent of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

My impression was that Vader operated outside and in a real sense 'above' the command structure, as a sort of political commissar. Politically, he was about on equal terms with the highest-ranked and most prestigious non-Sith Imperial leaders, like Tarkin.

Havok wrote:Do is it matter? If I could walk into the Pentagon and start giving orders that everyone would follow or hop on the closest F-14 and fly out to a carrier group and retask it without anyone questioning my orders, I could call my self anything I want. I mean he is in every way that matters, Supreme Commander. He probably even has a higher pay grade.

Well, that raises the awesome question "Did Darth Vader get paid?"

But aside from that, there's a huge difference between talking smack about your dead boss and talking smack about some jackass you only obeyed because the Emperor had given him an open hunting license on Imperial officers. It's all about whether Vader was an accepted part of the Imperial military structure, rather than being something they put up with because it was that or get their neck crushed. And by all evidence, Vader was put up with rather than accepted. Which makes it less of a surprise that people didn't like him and tended to smear his memory after his death.

Act like a ruthless SOB, and people will probably remember you as a ruthless SOB. And use your memory as a way to set themselves up as "not a ruthless SOB" by contrast.

And again, Vader only whacked two guys, and one we are fairly certain was someone that had repeatedly failed Vader. There was nothing casual about it. The EU makes it seem like the Executor (irony?) was the ship to be on if you wanted advancement because Vader was bumping off the command staff left and right. That is just not true.

No, it's not. But I don't think it's all that hard to see why, just going from movie evidence, Vader was regarded as a murderous Bad Boss by the Imperial military. Even if he only rarely personally killed senior officers, limiting himself to one or two per major campaign and only executing people guilty of major failures, he definitely earned his reputation as a dangerous man to work for. He even cultivated that reputation- that was the whole point, that you would be terrified to fail him because you knew that he would kill you horribly if you did.

Doing that, and capping it off with things like "Asteroids do not concern me" is not a great way to secure your legacy as a beloved leader in your own military.

Me, I think he just sat there "meditating" and reading actual intelligence briefings, then made up a bullshit explanation based on art to justify his deductions after the fact. Thrawn was a really secretive bastard, and trying to lay false trails for people who attempted to deduce how he could analyze an enemy's strategic weaknesses so well would be exactly his style.

That would be a great explanation if anyone, anywhere ever actually incorporated it.

Yeah. There's no evidence for it. I just happen to think it makes sense as an interpretation of the character, and eliminates one of the weirder, stupider aspects of the character. I'm not saying you're under any obligation to buy into it the way I have.

I think one of the points with Thrawn is that you can read anything you want into him- that's why Zahn never wrote a scene from his point of view, and why (as I recall) other Star Wars officers kept up with that tradition. You're not supposed to get inside his head; you're supposed to have to guess what's going on in there.

Abacus wrote:I'd like to point out two things. One: you are assuming that because standard Imperial doctrine says that such and such a number of ships exist for every system and so on above to Sector and Over-Sector level, that there must be such and such a number of ships total. That, frankly, is a bunch of bullshit. Doctrine and paper-strength is all fine, but the reality is hardly ever up to matching that. I cannot presently remember, but there are several EU book instances where it mentions the Empire only having so many ships for certain low-key areas. I recall how the Shelsha sector had only the ISD Reprisal; another sector was protected by a trio of antiquated Dreadnoughts; so on and so forth.

The [i]Imperial Sourcebook, Second Edition[/i] wrote:CHAPTER EIGHT
SECTOR GROUP ORGANIZATION

The Empire’s military might is organized at the sector level, and thus is called a Sector Group: all of the military forces assigned to a given sector of space. A Sector Group is a huge gathering of Imperial military might. It is a flexible organization, one which is readily reinforced to many times its original strength while retaining essentially the same command structure at all times. This flexibility is an integral part of the Emperor’s plan to fully arm the Empire.

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. Also, the forces deployed in a given sector will depend upon the importance, size, and location of that sector.

Emphasis added.

So, the OOB gives "average" and almost "minimum" numbers. While some Sectors may have lesser forces, there are also others that have larger ones; Brak Sector, which had fleet staging areas, had thirty ISDs in its otherwise normal Sector Group complement, for example. The source takes this into account. Furthermore, I was deliberately conservative to estimate "thousands" of Sector Groups as the minimum 2,000.

To imagine that the Empire had access to hundreds of Super Star Destroyers is laughable.

Because - you say so?

At most, perhaps a dozen Executor-class SSDs were constructed,

Han Solo in [i]Return of the Jedi[/i], referring to the [i]Executor[/i], wrote:Now don't get jittery, Luke. There are a lot of command ships.

And to try and use the Dark Empire Sourcebook (which is old and antiquated in itself) would be foolhardy.

Really? Do tell why the sourcebook should be less valid as evidence than any given novel, most of which have not had nearly as much thought put into them.

Thanas wrote:It doesn't, but keep displaying your ignorance.

As noted, I am no historian, so I may be horribly off in suggesting that the Spanish Navy in he 1800s did not employ tens of thousands of officers and men. Bakura, as of the Corellian Trilogy, fielded at least three Bakura-class Star Destroyers (crew complement: 8,250 each, for a total of 24,750) as of the Corellian Crisis. Using an unrealistically low 1:2 ratio for crew on major warships as compared to support, minor ships and shore establishment, the Bakuran Navy lists at least 74,000 personnel.

If the Spanish Navy was larger than that, consider the point conceded and chalk it up to my general ignorance of the Napoleonic era.

Really? Because you say so? There is not a single example of such a breakdown in history on any scale. The closest you could come to is the disintegration of the Roman Empire and even that took over 60 years. And even there, with the capital city lost etc., the Roman Empire did not disintegrate into warlordism in such a style.

Has there ever been a polity in history that has shared the Empire's situation? Has there been a breakdown of an empire where its rulers, believing themselves immortal, have purposely and expertly set up the entire political system to collapse in the event of their death? Where the highest agencies of the state have spent years encouraging warlordism and deliberately sabotaging any attempt to preserve order?

You have got nothing to explain why so many captains essentially carved out little fiefdoms. You have got nothing to explain why we have, even within the deep core, so many feuding factions except the character of the people leading them, and if one looks at them they are hardly shining examples of officers. The simple fact is that the loyal and good-intentioned officers did not make it to the top. That is a serious institutional flaw and cannot just be handwaved away.

Do you have evidence that there was infighting in the Deep Core? Everything that I have read on the topic suggests that Palpatine's plans worked admirably and that his lackeys assumed and maintained more or less complete control of the fleet elements that went there.

Incidentally, do you have evidence of these myriads of captains who carved out their own little fiefdoms?

Explain Teradoc, Zsinji, Harssk, Delvardus etc. All of them are power hungry sociopaths, hardly what one would expect in charge of Imperial units in a society that has a sane military.

Why do you pick half a dozen individuals who held commands on the Sectorial or so levels and automatically assume that they are representative of the Imperial officer corps as a whole? With an absolute lower limit of 2,000 sectors, each with its own Sector Group having in excess of a hundred admirals, it should be more or less inevitable that some bad apples slink through (due to political appointments or just plain screw-ups, if nothing else, and the Empire also has the legacy of the corrupt Old Republic to deal with; the Rebellion Era Sourcebook mentions that the Navy has been fairly successful, but not completely so, in purging the ranks of Old Republic hold-outs). With such a small amount of evidence (and obvious selection bias, given that the only Imperial officers notorious enough to be mentioned in the books are, more or less, those that did choose to go warlord and were good at it), I would be careful to make that kind of sweeping generalisations.

hoth. they said command ship. That could mean anything. It also took years to build Executor and all sources indicate 4 at the beginning

Darth Yan wrote:hoth. they said command ship. That could mean anything.

If the Executor had been extremely rare, would it not sort of kind of maybe have alarmed the Rebels that one special ubership was at a site that was, according to their intelligence, lightly defended? Look at the context of the quote:

LUKE: Vader's on that ship.

HAN: Now don't get jittery, Luke. There are a lot of command ships.

Now, the Executor was widely known to be Vader's command ship. If Executor-class Super Star Destroyers were extremely rare and Vader's was nearly the only such ship around, would Han dismiss his psychic friend's perceptions all that easily? He shrugs the Executor off as no big deal.

It also took years to build Executor and all sources indicate 4 at the beginning

I know the new, stupider version says so, but originally it was commissioned and built in a matter of months. There is absolutely no reason why many more ships cannot have been built in a few years, considering how easily they churn out Death Stars.

And of course, we have:

[i]Cracken's Threat Dossier[/i] wrote:The Super-class Star Destroyer was designed to be a sector-level command base

Darth Yan wrote:hoth. they said command ship. That could mean anything. It also took years to build Executor and all sources indicate 4 at the beginning

Oh what a crock of shit. It took like only two years to build a fucking Death Star.
And if that ship was something so new and special, someone like Han, who made a career out of evading Imperial ships would have been a little more surprised to see it. Instead, it was all "Oh chill out farm boy, welcome to the galaxy."

Darth Hoth wrote:If the Executor had been extremely rare, would it not sort of kind of maybe have alarmed the Rebels that one special ubership was at a site that was, according to their intelligence, lightly defended?

Not really. All Han and co. saw was Executor and a pair of ISDs. The Rebel fleet would have handled that easily. They also never said it was "lightly defended" but "relatively unprotected" (in the context of the Imperial fleet being spread around the galaxy).

And of course, we have: *snip quote*

Just to be a pedantic ass, the Super-class never actually got off the drawing boards.

(As OP) Please get back to the original talk-point. What would you like to see added to the EU via clearly written books or additional source books?

TC Pilot wrote:Not really. All Han and co. saw was Executor and a pair of ISDs. The Rebel fleet would have handled that easily. They also never said it was "lightly defended" but "relatively unprotected" (in the context of the Imperial fleet being spread around the galaxy).

A conventional engagement would have been questionable, if the Rebel fleet was 3 Home Ones and two dozen MC80 equivalents. Might have pretty close. Adding another 20 ISDs doesn't mean much when the Executor alone is worth 120.

----

Anyway, I know attempting strict historical comparisons is a pretty fraught business, but the Diadochs after Alexander's death might offer some parallels. A single pivotal ruler of a new, huge, and very diverse empire dies unexpectedly. A loosely constructed central government unravels in the face of uncertain succession. Multiple military commanders and regional governors jostle for position and establish quasi-independent domains. Many claimants to legitimate authority but no single claim more legal than "to the strongest." The central military divides itself into factions and bleeds itself in multiple internal wars. Kaine as Ptolemy, Pestage as Antipater, and Thrawn as ... Antigonus Monophthalmus?

Abacus wrote:(As OP) Please get back to the original talk-point. What would you like to see added to the EU via clearly written books or additional source books?

I would like to see nothing added to the EU.\
In fact, I would like to see the entire thing shit canned so we could actually get something good and consistent started after ROTJ.

P.S. This is what happens to threads sometimes. If you want to steer it back to the OP, then just start talking about the OP.

Havok wrote:

Abacus wrote: In fact, I would like to see the entire thing shit canned so we could actually get something good and consistent started after ROTJ.

To be honest, with any kind of vast fictional universe like this, you're bound to get varying qualities and inconsistencies.

Abacus wrote:(As OP) Please get back to the original talk-point. What would you like to see added to the EU via clearly written books or additional source books?

As already mentioned, a book on the Orinda campaign would be nice. An Imperial equivalent to the Rogue Squadron books would also be nice. I don't know if the New Essential Chronology and Atlas already covered this, but a close history of the Galactic Civil War, taken outside the context of every crisis revolving around the same 3 characters would also be welcome.

fractalsponge1 wrote:A conventional engagement would have been questionable, if the Rebel fleet was 3 Home Ones and two dozen MC80 equivalents. Might have pretty close. Adding another 20 ISDs doesn't mean much when the Executor alone is worth 120.

It was likely larger than that. The novelization says the fleet stretched "beyond visual range." The same basically applies to the Empire. I don't know where it's said, but I recall an entire Sector Group was present. Also, don't forget the Death Star itself, which destroyed a large number of Rebel ships.

Actually, you've made me realize a certain contradiction in my positions; I've often maintained that the Imperial fleet was actually winning the battle until Pellaeon provoked a rout. But then again, I also think Executors are a piece of crap, but that's not a road I want to go down right now.