Coruscant could never fall...

I'm not sure if there's been a thread regarding this yet... but if there hasn't, shame on you all! We've seen the most impossible and ridiculous thing happen in SbS and I'm astonished that fans aren't up in arms about it.

Coruscant COULD NEVER FALL the way it is portrayed in the book. This is the capital of the New Republic... the power of its planetary shields are legendary. Troy Denning (mistakenly mentioned Greg Keyes before) VASTLY misunderstood the nature and power of planetary deflector shields.

ESB: Remember when the Empire attacked Hoth and Veers told Vader the Rebels had erected a shield over their base? "The shield is strong enough to withstand ANY bombardment." This was from the Empire's Death Fleet, including the Executor, and Veers was blatantly saying that they could not even get through.
If a planetary shield that the Rebels could obtain was strong enough to hold back Darth Vader's fleet, then Coruscant's shields would be well near invulnerable. And they CERTAINLY would have been able to withstand the puny PLAMSA attacks the Vong threw at it... and Vong weapons are nothing compared to a heavy turbolaser.

Remember, even Alderaan's shield was powerful enough to withstand the Death Star's blast for a split second, and that beam was strong enough to completely annihilate the planet. At the same time, the Death Star had shields of its own which were strong enough to withstand the shockwave and eruption of Alderaan within an extremely close range... that is INSANELY strong!

I'm sorry, but you can't just "open a hole" in a planetary shield by hitting it enough times in one spot. You have to OVERWHELM the entire shield's capacity. The reason the ISD in ESB was destroyed by the asteroid was that these ships were *constantly* being hit and weakened.

So, that is the first, most obvious flaw in the Coruscant battle. Here's the second:

Even if the Vong could bring the shields down, and assuming they even elminiated anti-aircraft batteries (of which there must have been hundreds of thousands if not millions), their ground soldiers would then be asked to occupy a planet with TRILLIONS of inhabitants, many living in secluded, secret areas and armed to the teeth. The Vong would basically have to transplant their entire species to Coruscant if they hoped to conquer it within a lifetime. Their ground forces could certainly take a few key locations and frighten a large part of the population, but there is simply no way they could take the whole planet. The only option would be to lay waste to the entire thing from orbit. Given what the NR knows about the Vong, they would know better than to surrender. The people of Coruscant are on the so-called "Death Ground", which is not where you want your enemy to be. These people are trapped, cornered without an escape route, so they are going to fight back more fiercely than they ever could if if everything wasn't at stake...

And that, simply is why Coruscant WOULD NOT FALL to the Yuushan Vong.

Anyone else feel this way? Any evidence or comments to the contrary? Please make your voice known!

Sauron

 

"Greg Keyes VASTLY misunderstood the nature and power of planetary deflector shields."

Greg Keyes didn't write Star by Star, Troy Denning did.

"And they CERTAINLY would have been able to withstand the puny PLAMSA attacks the Vong threw at it... and Vong weapons are nothing compared to a heavy turbolaser."

Thousands of Refugee ships were being rammed into the shield along with Plasma fire, overloading the shields above Imperial City. Also, evacuation ships were leaving the planet so the shields over sections of the planet were down. And they probably had undercover agents there as well. (As shown by Fey'lya's 'Guards')

"Even if the Vong could bring the shields down, and assuming they even elminiated anti-aircraft batteries"

Anti-aircraft batteries were unshielded and thus prey to the attacking Coralskippers.

"ground soldiers would then be asked to occupy a planet with TRILLIONS of inhabitants, many living in secluded, secret areas and armed to the teeth. The Vong would basically have to transplant their entire species to Coruscant if they hoped to conquer it within a lifetime."

They would possibly destroy every 'abomination' there, it would bring them enourmous amounts of pleasure. And remember in DE, a Falling ships destroyed large sections of the cityscape. They could also throw Asteroids into the planet.

And Coruscant has fallen before, it can again. Once in Wedge's Gamble, once in Dark Empire and again at the end of the Graphic novel series.

 

Hmmmm, a shield rigged to protect a small area of a planet vs the several shield generators needed to encompass a planet. Oh, lets not forget that the rebels had to open a hole in their own shields to get their transports out.

 

Well, you're right, it could concievably fall under the right circumstances... But it would not fall under these.

However, ramming ships into the shields is going to be even less effective than the plasma attacks against them. If you understand the amount of power behind a heavy turbolaser (must less a fleet's worth firing at once) you realize that the mass of a moving ship crashing against those shields would be puny by comparison... These ships weren't even moving at near-light so the kinetic energy behind them was insignificant compared to what those shields could withstand (remember the asteroid tactic in the Zahn trilogy).
Although, Denning did seem to change some things around, I never recall X-Wings' "attack speed" being quite that fast.

Coruscant didn't just have "several" shield generators, it had many, and they were multi-level to prevent stuff like this from happening (Denning apparently skipped that important note as well). Futhermore, can you supply EVIDENCE that the Vong are ramming Coruscant with asteroids? Because I finished SbS and read Dark Journey and didn't see anything to support this claim...

The fact that the rebels opened their shields has nothing to do with this, since the Empire skirted the landing field and had ground forces on the planet by that time. They didn't use the hole at all.

Denning should have just had Vong spies sabotage the planetary shield generators. That would have been much more realistic (and that's what the Rogues had to do in the X-Wing books, they didn't take it in an outright assault).
And although details are more sketchy regarding the Empire's recapture of the planet around Dark Empire, we know they took it intact. If I recall correctly the NR fled because they couldn't have held it. It would've been only prudent to leave before the planet was blockaded and starved out.

 

But you can open holes in a planetary shield generator by hitting them enough times. It's called over loading the shield generators so that a section blows and with it the section of shield it controls. The rebel shield was too strong to with stand a bombardment only because the Imps didn't want to give the rebels enough time to get ready for them (which they still managed) and perhaps even escape.

 

Actually, the only way to realistically overload a planet's shields is with an Imperial Torpedo Sphere launching hundreds of proton torpedoes at a single location on the shield, intending to open a hold for a *split second* in which the few turbolasers on the sphere could then strike down and take out the generator.

The Empire didn't have torpedo spheres with them at Hoth... and the Vong certainly don't have them.

 

They didn't, I just said that they could do that if they wanted to. If I was Tsavvy I would have done it without a thought.

 

However, ramming ships into the shields is going to be even less effective than the plasma attacks against them. If you understand the amount of power behind a heavy turbolaser (must less a fleet's worth firing at once) you realize that the mass of a moving ship crashing against those shields would be puny by comparison... These ships weren't even moving at near-light so the kinetic energy behind them was insignificant compared to what those shields could withstand (remember the asteroid tactic in the Zahn trilogy).

As a counterpoint, these ships weigh thousands if not hundreds of thousands of tons- moving at considerable speed through their engines. Plus, they have their reactors going super critical and detonating against the shields, something that, while I am loathe to defend anything Zahn has done, asteroids would not have. A starship exploding, plus we have no idea whether the Yuuzhan Vong had placed explosives on board them, have far more destructive capabilities than a turbo laser.

 

"Futhermore, can you supply EVIDENCE that the Vong are ramming Coruscant with asteroids?"

Sauron, I believe Elegos was speaking hypothetically about HOW they could subdue the population and control the planet. He said: "they WOULD POSSIBLY....They COULD also throw Asteroids into the planet."

Elegos, you picked up on all the points I was going to address.

 

coruscant is a symbol for the new republic
they both look nice and strong but at the heart of it are not

 

Even if the Vong could bring the shields down, and assuming they even elminiated anti-aircraft batteries (of which there must have been hundreds of thousands if not millions), their ground soldiers would then be asked to occupy a planet with TRILLIONS of inhabitants, many living in secluded, secret areas and armed to the teeth. The Vong would basically have to transplant their entire species to Coruscant if they hoped to conquer it within a lifetime. Their ground forces could certainly take a few key locations and frighten a large part of the population, but there is simply no way they could take the whole planet. The only option would be to lay waste to the entire thing from orbit. Given what the NR knows about the Vong, they would know better than to surrender. The people of Coruscant are on the so-called "Death Ground", which is not where you want your enemy to be. These people are trapped, cornered without an escape route, so they are going to fight back more fiercely than they ever could if if everything wasn't at stake...

They wouldn't have to do anything at all to pacify Coruscant. The planet has so many inhabitants that it couldn't possibly be self sufficient, and I've never heard of there being any agricultural production onplanet. Without the thousands of freighters that kept Coruscant alive flying in all the time and the infrastructure that got the supplies to the people, most of the population would starve or at least be in no condition to mount a resistance in no time. All the Vong would have to do is wait for people to start dying of starvation en masse. Of course, they could just use chemical/biological weapons to wipe out the population entirely, since they would have to convert such an abomination ridden planet in order to use it anyway.

 

It truly depends on what happens when a ship hits a shield. If, for example, the ship completely explodes and becomes... energy, it is very likely that a ship ramming the system would have more damage than any mass destruction device out there (pound for pound). And the reasoning is simple, if you use E = mc^2 then the energy produced from the ships collision and subsequent conversion to energy is the mass of the ship * the speed of light squared. Any weapon system is based upon detonation when it reaches the target. Thus, the proton torpedo detonates when it hits the shield or when it is very very close to hitting the shield, and thus does not do the total conversion to energy. T.L.'s and plasma blasts are already in the shape of energy, so they can not convert further. The sheilds are weakened two-fold, 1) they must expend the energy required to convert the ship to energy 2) it must absorb the explosion from the now energized ship.

HOWEVER, if instead the vessel just vaporizes and changes from the solid structure it was into some gaseous bubble when it hist the shield, it sucks up the energy needed to heat the structure to a gaseous point, and releases very little in comparison. The shields are not drained from the explosion, instead they are drained from the conversion energy required to go from solid to gas.

Perhaps instead, the ship when it strikes the shield, just ricochets off the shield and the part that hit it is now a molten mass of lava... The energy needed to convert the touched part to the plasma state is drained from te shield...


In summary, I feel the majority of power being sucked from the shields is coming from the conversion of matter moreso than the weapons detonating on the shields...

Please, correct me if I am dreadfuly wrong. I am making educated guesses on how the shields react to masses hitting them.

PF

 

First Sauron a few good points.

Courscant's defenses were at full strenght or nearly so, it was an absolute clash of titans. Half of the New Republic space navy was present in addition to Coruscants defenses. It was the largest battle of the war.

Now that being said. Here's why the Vong took the planet.

1. The Vong came in with tens of thousands of ships. The Imperials at the zenith of their power couldn't muster an offensive that large. Neither could the New Republic. I'm not sure you realise how big of an assault force this was. It was basically everything they could spare even after losing a thousand ships at Black Bantha.

2. The hostages allowed the Vong to break through the ambush that was supposed to have inflicted heavy damage. They lost half their fleet in the process, but they broke through to Coruscant. Kefrey's refusal to fire through the refugees doomed the planet. Garm Bel Ibis desperate charge slowed the Vong, but not for long.

3. Once the Vong were in sight of the planet they slammed thousands of refugee into the sheilds. If that wasn't enough, once the mine feild destroyed many Vong ships, all of the wounded ones (1,000 or so), crashed at once into the weakest point of the sheild. Losses mean nothing. Every gun on Coruscant and every turbolaser on every ship in the New Republic fleet in addition to renforcements was making the Vong pay for every inch. But in this case, sarifice brings victory.


4. Even once the sheilds went down, the defensive platforms and surface cannons mauled the Vong fleet even further. The dropship fleet? Each of those ships were carrying thousands of Vong and hordes of them were blown from the sky. The atmospheric defense force put up a hell of a fight as well.

5. Unfortunatly, it wasn't enough. Once enough defensive structures were destroyed the Vong could attack with impunity. The only option was to retreat. Even then the NR fights all throughout the ground invasion. Borsk included.

6. The good news. The Vong losses for this attack were far too high according to Tsavong Lah himself. From a Vong this is high praise indeed. In my veiw the Vong have over extended themselves and lost too much to hold their vast teritory. The battle of Coruscant will be the Stalingrad of this war. Mark my words. The New Republic will be back.

 

Anakin1607- Excellent post, very elegant also.

When I was reading the Battle for Coruscant it reminded me of Londo Mollari's description of the two-year Human-Minbari war from 'Babylon 5: In The Beginning.' in which he discusses how the Humans made the Minbari fight for every inch of space. Paraphrasing: "...and they did this for two years! First, they fought them with ships, when they ran out of ships, they used guns. When they ran out of guns they used their bare hands. In the end, they ran out of time. I only hope when my time comes I have as much dignity as I saw in them." It was a powerful speech delivered over a montage of the war leading up to the Battle of the Line between the orbits of Earth and Mars when the Humans took every ship not used for the evacuation of Earth, mounted guns on it and threw it at the Minbari fleet.

I agree that taking Coruscant was a mistake for the Yuuzhan Vong. While it decapitated the government (and I agree with Jedi Ben's implication that the government should not have been so paralyzed as they were), it also meant that the they now have over a trillion people to either feed or let starve since there is no way Coruscant can supply enough food by itself for so many people.

 

Keir

That's really funny because I was going to mention how the Battle of Coruscant was alot like the Battle of the Line! With the exception that the Vong didn't surrender.

 

Some good points there, guys. I have to concede that much. At least we got some thoughtful discussion going.

I'm still extremely skeptical as to whether they could have gotten through the shields or not. I guess we don't know *exactly* (as someone pointed out) how a shield absorbs the energy thrown at it. Still, from the precedents we've seen (and I'm going by movie references mainly) planetary shields are very strong. As for the number of Vong ships... I didn't feel the book was very clear on that point. Tens of thousands would have made it the largest battle of the war (possibly ever), yes. But if they were that strong how could the much weaker NR squadrons even make it to the center of the fleet to kill the yammosks?

I agree, the inhabitants could simply be starved out once a blockade is established... but we saw the Vong sending in landing parties. Maybe this was just for the main areas, but I agree that the Vong shouldn't be able to hold Coruscant. Their only option really is to destroy it or reform it with their technology. I doubt they could take on the billions or trillions of people on the planet as slaves.

There's also the issue of time here. If the NR was worried about all the refugees at Talfalgio (not sure on the spelling) wouldn't they be concerned about all the inhabitants of Coruscant? Maybe half the NR fleet was devastated, but (and this is just my opinion) if their capital world had fallen and trillions of their citizens were in jeopardy wouldn't the NR quickly muster the other half their fleet to drive the Vong away? Most of the Vong fleet was destroyed. Now that the NR is consistently outgunning the Vong multiple to one, they might be able to pull it off.

In short, I'm still not convinced the Vong could make it through the shield... but if they did, I don't think they could hold the planet for an extended length of time.

 

The exact phrase in the book is, "The counter at the bottom of the display read in the tens of thousands and still climbing." at the top of page 468.

The reason the New Republic was able to destroy the yammosks at the center of the fleet is that it wasn't the New Republic. It was the Jedi Eclipse squadrons that made those attacks.

The problem with bringing in the other half of the New Republic fleet is that who would be left to defend all the other systems? The Vong could just sweep in and take over all of the undefended systems. In a way, that would be worse than Coruscant's fall. As important as Coruscant is, it's only one system.

I'm glad you see where we're coming from. You don't have to agree, but at least here's the response you wanted.

 

I see the Battle of Coruscant as being a little like what if the Germans had taken St. Petersberg or Moscow...great, what do you do with it once you have it.

Essentially, the Yuuzhan Vong sacrificed probably 1/3 ro 1/2 of their fleet in this operation. Yes, you destroyed the New Republic, but you also forced (unbeknownst to the Yuuzhan Vong), it's key members into doing what they do best - fighting in a rebllion.

Yes, I agree, they can either let people starve, or god help you, try and flush out a tens of millions of people - if just 1 in 10 has a blaster, then they will have ONE HELL OF FIGHT on their hands.

So, unless they plan some bio-engineered plague to wipe out the survivors or do a Sernpidal or Ithor to Coruscant, there isn't a whole heck of a lot they can do with it.

 

Funny, I though from the description in the book most of the civilans on Coruscant had time to evacuate. Granted plenty got left behind, but saving half of the planet is better than not saving anyone.

 

Anakin1607,

Hum, yes, I also saw that, but the logical part of me says you couldn't get 1 to 2,000,000,000 of a planet in as little time as they had. How many ships would that have taken- plus all the ones that did leave were smaller atmospheric capable craft.

I suspect there are still millions, if not billions, of people left planetside.

 

brilliant posts guys

 

It took a few days for the Vong to advance. I have no doubt bilions were left behind. But even if they got half evacuated thats saying alot considering how many people live there. Does anyone remember how long it took to evacuate Ithor?

 

There is no need to evacuate Ithor- there weren't any people there in the first place. The flaoting city ships are all space capable, apparently, and may even have hyper drives.

 

The problem with trying to scour the Vong off Coruscant is compounded by the fact that the NR believes the Vong fleet to be much larger than it actually is. At one point (in SBS, I think), Tsavong Lah remarks that the Vong fleet is actually spread quite thinly, but they maintain the illusion of supreme strength.

On the civilian evacuation issue - remember that Borsk thought he could hold the planet. He was probably assuring civilians that there was no need to leave; he couldn't afford for the capital to become uninhabited if the Vong lost. Also, many of the senators didn't leave until the last; you'd think that they would be amoung the first so as to maintain a working government in case of Coruscant's fall.