Books The Essential Guide to Warfare by Jason Fry and a pseudonymous Scotsman

I'm not going to add anything -- I'm just going to demand everyone notice my avatar, which would have been my avatar a long time ago if I weren't a fleabrain. Because duh.

Now carry on.

 

Well, initial reports have Death Squadron as being Executor plus 5 Star Destroyers. Newer information adds more ships to the roster that take the total over the 5 ship limit. Perhaps Death Squadron is a larger formation, with a core group of Executor and 5 ISDs (Devastator, Stalker, Tyrant, ect) that operate together, while the other members are deployed individually or as small groups to other locations as needed. Sometimes the ships in the core group are rotated out for various reasons, and others join the Executor. At Endor, the potential to engage the core Rebel fleet caused Vader and the Emperor to bring in not only Executor and her escorts, but consolidate the rest of the expanded Death Squadron, explaining why the Death Squadron roster at Endor is larger than 5 ships. Add a few local ships, some Grand Admirals and potentially their own taskforces, and you end up with a force made up of units that can evade asset tracking- most of the Imperial Fleet is spread out throughout the galaxy, but things like the Grand Admirals and Death Squadron ships tend to run around normally, so losing track of them is not as worrying as if say a sector fleet went missing, or some of the battlecruisers or dreadnoughts left their normally deployed areas.

 

Very nice!! The character John Ostrander named for me looks nothing like me, hence why I stick with good ole Ackbar. Though adding cute little mini Ackbar as my new avatar shows my funnier side.

--Adm. Nick

 

To a degree this reminds me of how the M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System in the US Army is referred to as the "commander's personal shotgun;" the battery or batteries in a large formation unit generally answer directly to the commanding general because those weapons are the prime choice for taking out high-value targets like enemy artillery and command posts. A formation like Death Squadron, even if not under the Emperor's personal command, could well be considered his personal fleet if under the command of a high-ranking subordinate such as Vader and reserved for top-priority missions.

 

Domuspublica.net is apparently down, but I've managed to track down an earlier version of the site. Sykes has a nice essay on the larger forces of the Empire, including Death Squadron and its unit makeup. Wonder how he'd incorporate the new info in EGTW?

Oh, the novel Death Star had a reference to the First Naval Fleet, of which Nova Stihl had served in. Maybe that was Palpatine's favored unit?

 

Home One. The Headquarters Frigate. Independence.

Yes, I am still torn on the whole question of Ackbar's flagship and the command ship for the Rebel Fleet.

To be honest, it is one area that I am more interested in a definitive answer than I am in either end of the argument. The EGTW does directly address the issue, with both Independence and Home One being tied to Ackbar in various parts. I know there was alot of discussion back before the guide was released as to whether Home One was a designation for Independence (confirmed in XW: Alliance) or if they in fact two separate MC80 Home One-type cruisers (confirmed in the CCG).

jasonfry, Thrawn McEwok

Out of curiosity, why did you opt to leave the question unanswered in the EGTW. Any chances a future online supplement will clear this up once and for all?

--Adm. Nick

 

The 12 ships from the Battle of Endor certainly seemed to have been kept together, probably under the direct command of the ERC (as the representatives of the Emperor) and outside of the control of rival naval Admirals and various Moffs, especially considering the death grip they had on their existing forces.

 

I'm really glad a satisfactory explanation for Mon Calamari being left alone for so long by the Empire was included. All up, I'm pretty happy with the EGW.

One thing that sort of slipped through the cracks is an ostensible inconsistency about how the Rebel fighters slipped through the Death Star's shields. The EGW says it was due to tiny gaps in the shield, whereas the ANH novelization has them pass through the outer shields, switching their deflectors to double front and experiencing turbulence - this is in line with the movie except they replaced "outer shields" with "the magnetic field" (in ANH "magnetic field" was clearly a phrase for 'shield' - note when the Falcon is landing on the Death Star the flight officer announces "clear bay 321, we are opening the magnetic field".) My impression of the ANH novel was always that the Death Star 1's shields was permeable to fighters if the fighters did it 'just right'*.

*"Accelerate to attack speed" helps with this - the Rebel fighters would've had to be travelling at high acceleration to even get to the Death Star before it blew up Yavin, so I always assumed they slowed right down when they reached the shield, then sped up again after they passed through (not full acceleration though, you can't fight at those speeds). Though I doubt you'd want to be going uber-fast when trying to fly through a small gap in a shield either, just in case you mess it up.

 

Interesting. McEwok can jump in if he remembers differently, but I looked at our emails back and forth and we were, in fact, discussing whether to address Home One/Independence during the final stages of the manuscript. Not sure why it never happened, but suspect it just fell through the cracks. Books take absolutely forever, but then inevitably at the end you have no time.

Promise you guys this: If I can find a venue for all the cut material, I will at least raise HO/Indy with LFL and see where we get.

 

Why doesn't the MC line use classes for the variant instead of types, such as the MC80 family or the MC90? For example, why isn't the MC80 Home One-type Star Cruiser designated the MC80 Home One-class Star Cruiser (though I would prefer it if it were the MC80 Independence-class Star Cruiser), the MC80 Liberty-type Star Cruiser designated the MC80 Liberty-class Star Cruiser, the MC80a Star Cruiser designated MC80a Reef Home-class Star Cruiser (Just because the name Reef Home was used as a possible name for a MC80 Liberty-class Star Cruiser doesn't mean the name couldn't be used for MC80 Star Cruiser of another class), the MC80b Star Cruiser designated the MC80b Mon Remonda-class Star Cruiser, and the MC90 Star Cruiser designated the MC90 Defiance-class Star Cruiser? The MC140 Scythe-class main battle cruiser has a class designation alongside an alpha numeric MC designation, so I don't see a reason for the rest of the MC line to not have class designations.

 

Personally, I've taken to calling the MC80a the Solidarity-class, since the vessel seems to be one of the very first MC80a's donated to the Rebellion.

 

Ah, no wonder I overlooked the Solidarity, it's from TFUII.

 

Interestingly enough, the Solidarity appears before the MC80a was clearly defined by EGTW as being a dedicated combat vessel rather than the modified luxury liners and colonisation vessels used by the Alliance in the timeframe of TFU. I'd absolutely love it if a future source establishes the Solidarity as an early prototype of a streamlined combat vessel, with Commodore Yat-De Viedas' glowing praise of the vessel's performance giving the green light for mass production of the MC80a model after Yavin.

 

If they won't budge on the Reef Home then that would be a reasonable alternative, even though I don't particularly care for anything from much of anything both TFU and TFUII.

 

Since it never appeared in the game, had nothing to do with the whiny Marek clone and doesn't mess with canon for the sake of being flashy and awesome, I'm willing to let it slide

 

I recall Zahn doing similar things with Outbound Flight- that had shields that could be "slipped through" as well.

 

About the Battle of Endor...

We know Piett was in command, then the Pride of Tarlandia's unnamed admiral, then Strage. We also know Prittick was the fleet's most senior survivor, ahead of Harrsk.

So I'm wondering, is it possible that the Pride of Tarlandia was Prittick's flagship, and that he survived its destruction?

 

In real life, some navies use "type" to designate a broader line of vessels. I'm not 100 % sure what the difference is between the class and type usage, though.

EDIT: I checked some links and it seems "Type" is often used before a "Class" designation is created, at least in the British and German navy. So, classes will have both the type and the class name in the same designation, relegating the type number to the first portion of the name with the warship type in a single letter in front. Type 45 Daring Class Destroyer, F122 Bremen Class Frigate etc.

The Calamari navy at the time of the Rebellion would probably be cobbling together all kinds of cruisers within a broad range and giving them type designations instead of an actual class. As the New Republic became more structured, their designs were also more streamlined. Republic-class Star Destroyer, Mediator-class and MC140 Scythe-class battlecruisers etc. The last one even shows this combination of terms.

 

Thanks Jason! I would love to know what the Holocron says about the HO/Indy question.

As for th cut material, I say just make LFL publish a second supplementary guide.

--Adm. Nick

 

I am really hoping to see the cut material get a home somewhere. Think in somewhat olden days, they could have been published online as part of an article or something but that seems to had died down a bit. Plus, I think there might be quite a bit cut stuff that might not be possible to put online as an article mainly due to the length of the material or because the variety of topics.

Out of the cut content though, I'm quite keen on the Rakatan stuff.

 

The Extra Credit Class on Fleet Junkie Flunking?