Lit Fleet Junkie Flagship- The technical discussions of the GFFA (Capital Ships thread Mk. II)

Clearly they put Raddus in charge to make it fair to the Empire. if Ackbar was there off the bat it would be just so imbalanced.

Honestly though I wonder if Raddus was in the military previously. If he was just a cool mayor there is no way he would be put in charge over Ackbar who served in the clone wars. Perhaps Raddus was involved in the Republic fleet itself during the war.

 

Ackbar did serve in the Clone Wars, but only as a captain on the young prince's staff. Raddus could very well have been a field-grade officer with frontline experience.

Being mad that Ackbar wasn't in overall command at the time of Yavin/Scarif is like being mad Napoleon wasn't running the whole French military by 1792. He was around, but there were a number of reasons why he wasn't THE guy yet.

 

Regarding the destruction of Pammant, it wasn't just that a ship crashed into it that caused all that devastation. A battlecruiser-sized ship suffered critical damage to its hyperdrive, causing it to jump into hyperspace and hit the planet at faster-than-light speeds, with the resultant impact fracturing the planet right down to its core. Just for reference, an asteroid travelling at terminal velocity and sufficiently large or dense enough not to burn up upon entering atmosphere can cause cataclysmic damage to a planet's surface, even if it doesn't destroy the planet itself. So a 4,000 metre vessel hurtling at relativistic speeds could conceivably cause even greater destruction. I imagine that the reason this isn't employed as a tactic is because it was a freak accident with a mathematically miniscule chance of occurring, given that hyperdrives (at least the Legends kind) aren't supposed to function in the presence of a gravity well. The damage must have occurred in such a way that it disabled all safeguards and redundancies, whilst simultaneously leaving the damaged device functional and causing it to engage close to the planetary mass - a feat mathematically improbable (but not impossible, evidently) even if you're trying to do it on purpose, let alone accidentally induced by an enemy attack. I have a theory that the entire unlucky crew of the Quaestor all bought winning lotto tickets that week, and never got to cash them in.

 

I know Ackbar served, that was my point. Ackbar would be the head of the Alliance fleet over Raddus any day UNLESS Raddus did serve at some point. I am not knocking Raddus. I ***king love Raddus. My point is that logically he would have served before hand or Ackbar would be in charge. I do wonder what happened to the former Pub admirals in the new eu. In Legends they got killed mere days later if they might defect.

Also I was not actually mad at all or making a critique. i was making a joke about how epic Ackbar is. Heck check out the RO Raddus thread to see me make a bunch of bad Raddus/ chuck Norris puns.

Such as "when Leia says "I love you" she is talking about raddus and Han knows"




Seriously everyone check out the raddus thread. It keeps going with the puns

 

Just to be clear, I'm not "mad" whether Raddus or Ackbar was more senior, I was just curious if we had gotten more information on early Rebel Alliance command structure yet. With Raddus' more aggressive personality I could see him as senior or as fellow admiral while the rebel navy was still forming, or with Ackbar rising as senior fleet commander after Scarif (presuming Raddus died there, it would be cool if the bridge pod could fly away on its own, but I doubt it). I can think of a few scenarios, just was curious if any novel had touched on it (something like this might be a bit outside of the Rebels' cartoon range, which has already done a lot with early Rebel Alliance of course, but they've also still got a lot of Force stuff to go through in the last season).

It'd be cool if later comics or novels included references to Raddus or at least showed MC75. Ironic that the first nucanon MC cruiser would be from before the more iconic M80/A ones, but that's due partially to post-RotJ demilitarization/laziness.

 

Well I mean the MC80/A was kinda the first used it seems. It was just not fully militarized yet during the meeting at Dantooine. I would love to see other pre MC75 Mon Cal ships as well though. I wonder if they had any cruisers during the Clone War

 

Ackbar rising to fleet admiral and commander of the Alliance Navy post-Scarif points to him already being second-in-command, or at the very least a prominent admiral commanding a battle line of the fleet. He's already an admiral during the Yavin evacuation when the Rebel Fleet arrives, so I still say he's at Telaris during RO rushing to get as many warships ready for combat, knowing that the battle against the Death Star will require every/any Rebel assets available.

When you consider that after Scarif the Alliance has lost the head of Fleet Command (Raddus) and the head of Starfighter Command (Merrick), Mon Mothma had some top leadership posts to fill.

--Adm. Nick

 

She was probably eager for Cracken to get back from his Outer Rim mission so she could be rid of Drayven, too.

 

Its Draven. And yes, I would be eager too.

 

Its Draven. And yes, I would be eager too.

 

Wasn't there a point in the novelization which states that Mon and Draven did respect each other?

Also why does everyone seem to dislike Draven? He was extreme sure but everything he did had a practical reason behind it. he was pragmatic and while I disagree with his choices I think a voice like his is needed in the Alliance especially early on.

 

I'd really like to see some Espirion warships in the NR fleet. I actually have a slight suspicion they may have built the Hammerheads.

 

The problem is - he defied Mon Mothma's instructions to order Galen Erso assassinated when she wanted him taken alive and brought back.

Given how late the process was (the Death Star was already functional) killing him would be extremely counterproductive - he could give them vital info on it - and yet, Draven continues with his defiance of instructions after the fall of Jedha - contacting Cassian and ordering him to make the kill - when he ought to be thinking "OK, kidnapping him will be more beneficial than killing him now".

 

While I agree that he was in the wrong and made a bad choice I don't see why people hate him. In his mind Galen was a collaborator and would not give any info and the time and effort to capture him would take longer and may still result in his death. To Draven silencing him then and there would make things quicker and remove him from assisting in any future Imp weapons. It is also possible that if Galen was actually on their side killing him would get the Empire off the Alliance's trail cause they would have trouble using him as leverage or a way of luring in anyone since he would be dead.

Side note, thank you for actually getting why the Galen kill would be a bad decision. People act like Cassian not going through with it was solely because he did not want to kill anymore but in all honest it was more that it was a needless kill.

To me Draven is someone who has been so wrapped up in this same war for over 2 decades that he feels he must do everything to win even if it is the easy out or honestly impractical. He does seem to regret what happens the moment Cassian is in danger and clearly care about his welfare. That shows me that this is a guy who does care immensely but likely will not tolerate the idea that an Imp collaborator was "just following orders" under duress. I found Draven to be fascinating and all I want right now is a novel with him and Cassian cause their mentalities are so interesting.

 

what if Galen were to make the weakness so that once the death star tries maximum fire power (such as destroying an entire planet), then it explode? ie. small demonstration such as destroying a single city or an area is fully functional.

But instead he make the exhaust port.

Galen was a collaborator. No excuses would convince me otherwise. It's a fact. Oh, he didn't want to, they made him. It's like do this or die, and your daughter too. There is no choice. NO, there is always a choice. You can choose to die, your daughter too, if a million on Alderaan can live.

These SW movies started to send dangerous messages such as it's okay to disobey direct orders if you think you can win. Some kind of 'morality' makes everything okay. It wasn't like this in Episode 4 to 6.

 

Draven wanted to assassinate a non-combatant scientist. That's cold-blooded murder, nothing more. It's wrong. It's what the Empire does. And Cassian gets that at the last moment.

I sure hope someone told Mon and Bail bout that and Draven got a dressing-down. If he wants to use such brutal tactics, he should go work for Palpatine. The Alliance to Restore the Republic should not use such immoral tactics.

 

a "non combatat" scientist helped to make the nuke.
Is he a really non combatant?

 

Yes. He's no more a combatant than Eugene Stoner, inventor of the AR-15 rifle, was.

 

Galen embraced the "mole" role - he intended to get the weakness built and not found out, from the moment he left with Krennic at the start of the movie.

 

Granted we're dealing with fictional technology here, but it's safe to say if he tried a more direct method of sabatoge it would be detected immediately. It's like the difference between installing a small hatch in a tank that a lucky soldier could theoretical toss a grenade into, and just rigging the tank to blow up the moment it fires; the second one is definitely going to get noticed.

That's a very all or nothing, moral absolutism approach. If Galen is the only person in the galaxy that can make it work, you could certainly argue that it's better for him to just kill himself. But the vibe I got is that even without him they would have accomplished it, it just would have taken them much longer. Galen stalled the construction long enough for a Rebellion to form, and his addition of the weakness allowed it to be destroyed.

I don't see what this has to do with Galen. If you're continuing the conversation about Draven above, his disobeying Mothma is shown as a bad thing. Also while the OT movies don't show the heroes disobeying direct orders as far as I can remember, Luke does go off to do his own thing a bunch of times. And he ultimately disobeys Yoda and Kenobi's advice to kill Vader.

. . . YES. Why wouldn't he be? You can argue about the morality of Galen's "collaboration". You can argue about the morality of the development of the A-bomb in real life. But to argue that a scientist is a combatant because the thing he's working on will be used to kill people is just silly.

 

It would be nice if Galen had rigged the Death Star to blow up when they start up the superlaser, but something like that would be too obvious. Unless they were really eager and/or stupid, they would have run tests and probably run up the laser to almost full power before actually firing the thing, or someone else would have noticed if the laser was that unstable.

Although even the exhaust port barely counts as a weakness as you'd have to fly past a lot of guns to reach it and its near impossible to hit, even with computer assistance. Which is why I kind of prefer the old explanation, that it was just an oversight. And even then, if Tarkin hadn't been so overconfident they wouldn't have had even that small chance. Well, Vader was guarding that weakness too which didn't help.

Rogue One did make the Alliance grayer, but its always been a bit gray, its hard to go through war clean, especially given their huge disadvantage against the Empire. Things like Cassian killing that informant aren't nice, but at least Cassian was more practical.

 

It's going to get noticed if Galen did what I'm suggesting.
But as I said, small demonstration will work.
It's only when they try to destroy a planet, say alderaan, that it blows up taking Tarkin, Vader, Tagge, Yularen and all of them Imperials with them. Regrettably the princess will die as well, but she would be a martyr. If we are lucky the Emperor would be there to oversee the armed and "operational battle station and get killed as well.

 

You should read the Rogue One novelization. It addresses your point and exactly when Galen didn't do what you suggest.

 

ah. I already saw the movie in the theater. Why must I buy the book to get the whole picture? Why? Why me?!
oh well. It's just a thought. Didn't work out.

 

I agree with most of your points here, but I think that the Canon explanation for the exhaust port is a prime example of Canon materials misunderstanding themselves.

Ever since the first time I saw RO, I always took away from the 'Hologram Scene' that Galen wasn't responsible for the exhaust port - he was responsible for the chain reaction that would occur if a blast hit the main reactor. His dialogue states:

"Saw, the reactor module, that's the key. That's the place I've laid my trap. It's well hidden and unstable, one blast to any part of it will destroy the entire station. You'll need the plans, the structural plans for the Death Star, to find the reactor."

His treachery wasn't as obvious as the exhaust port itself, it was the composition of the main reactor that made it vulnerable if it were to be hit in some capacity. The exhaust port was just a means to an end - even Galen didn't know that it was the key to the station's destruction (hence why he would tell Saw to go get the plans to "find the reactor," and thus, find a route to delivering a lethal blow to it). If Galen himself put in the exhaust port, why not make this more explicit during his message? My point in all this is RO the movie suggests that the exhaust port vulnerability was just an oversight (as you prefer, Nobody145) made lethal by an unstable main reactor. After all, the need for an exhaust port seems pretty straightforward when you're firing a planet-killing beam.

But then we get the RO novelization. I love those inter-chapter 'memos' as much as the next guy (they're a fun look into the bureaucracy of Imperial research), but they muddied up my interpretation by making it pretty clear that Galen explicitly put in the exhaust port as the weakness. Most of the fandom seems to have subscribed to this explanation (after all, it is 'easier' to think this way because it's a more straightforward answer), but I still think that this might be different enough from the movie's implication so as to render this point of the novelization non-canon (by those weird novelization Canon rules). Anyone, let me know if there are any other Canon materials out there that make this distinction more clear. If not, I like RO the movie's explanation enough to keep thinking of the main reactor as the 'true' weakness. It's more subtle than the exhaust port explanation - the unstable nature/composition of the MR might only be apparent to someone of Galen's skill (and as Catalyst suggests, he seems pretty exceptional).

 

Two weaknesses instead of one - a "main weakness" and a "weakness enabling the triggering of the main weakness".