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

Speaking of Mon Cal cruisers, the current list of canon named vessels is below:

MC85 star cruiser
Raddus (Dawn of Tranquility)

MC80A Home One-type star cruiser
Aurora Flare
Defiance
Home One
Independence
Nautilian

MC80 Liberty-type star cruiser
Freedom's Dawn
Invincible Faith
Liberty
Restoration
Striking Distance

MC80 star cruiser
Almathea
Echo of Hope
Freedom's Run

MC75 star cruiser
Profundity

--Adm. Nick

 

Hmmm...looking at it, it's very intentionally drawn as coming from something inside the hanger. I guess if we're being generous would could say that since they knew they were facing a planetary siege they had special orbital bombardment weapons placed in their hangers. It seems a pretty flagrant mistake to make considering the artist seems to have taken time to drawn some fairly accurate and detailed (compared to some artists) ISD's.
I wish there'd been a line of dialogue or caption box to clear it up, I wondered about it when I first saw it an assumed they intended it to be read as a weapon concealed in the hanger, but I've no idea how that's supposed to work.

 

I was bummed that the shot of the final three Mon Cala merchant ships escaping didn't have the same level of detail that earlier panels had. The ISD's suddenly looked funky, the cruisers themselves went from looking like MC80's to looking like some sort of weird, squat ships. However, overall the artist truly knocked this arc out of the park, so the occasional less than stellar drawing is to be expected. This issue had ALOT of detail.

--Adm. Nick

 

A ship legends never identified?



I can hardly believe such a thing!

I am the same, mega class really?

Seeing as we had the mandatory IV maybe it's a praeter III?

 

Couple of things.

1) north korea is a example of a country that even at "peace" spends most it' GDP on the military. Basicly it uses it's military to spur it' economy.
Most that military in turn is used on oppression.

2) why did the Empire not send more than 30 star destroyers at end r?
Because why would They?
30 star destroyers, 1 executor and 2 other command ships plus a honking big death star already out numbered the rebels my magnitudes.
Sending more forces would of just uselessly divert forces from other areas.
The empire did not lose endor through lack of numbers, in fact they should not gave lost full stop. It was only a bunch of bears showing up that caused

Mon moths was pretty stupid.......at least in the aftermath books.

 

The ones you haven't read?

 

The ones I read the story lines up on here and Wookipedia so I would not have to subject myself to Chuck wendigs writing.

 

The Databank says the the AA-9 transport is over 30km in length, but it doesn’t appear to be that large. Is the Databank correct or has there been some drastic miscalculation with the people who make those entries? Every reference picture I’ve looked at for the ship places it’s length well below 30km when compared to a human.


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Nevermind. They fixed it.


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30km?




Not 300m?

 

I've long argued that the Empire's military strength is seriously under-represented.

1.) There are 20 Oversectors, each with a Grand Moff which are subdivided into regional sectors. There are 1,024 Regional Sectors, each with a 'Regional Governor' (usually a Moff) which are subdivided into planetary sectors. There is an unknown number of planetary sectors and freestanding subsectors, but they probably number in the tens of thousands.

25,000 ISDs leaves the empire substantially understrength and forced to rely on smaller ships like the Victory-class and Gladiator-class Star Destroyers. Considering there are 1.8 million member worlds in the Galactic Empire and quintillions of taxpayers, the actual cost as a part of the GDP may be surprisingly low. Building the Death Stars works out to less than a deci-credit per taxpayer in terms of actual cost (in fact a trillion credit Death Star paid for by a quintillion of taxpayers, works out to less than 1/1,000,000 of a credit per taxpayer).

2.) I've long suspected that the battle of Endor is larger than what we witnessed on-screen. We know that Interdictors were present from newer stories in the canon, but we've never seen them. We know that there was at least 1 Raider-class Corvette. We also know that the novelization says the rebel fleet stretched out to the point that Lando couldn't see the edges of the formation (and he's in the center of it).

We know the rebel plan calls for them to surround the DSII with their capital ship fleet to form a perimeter. This in itself would require hundreds of warships, possibly thousands depending on their spacing. Most of the shots are relatively close-up shots of the Rebel fleet as it arrives and leaves, meaning there could easily be those other ships present... just outside the field of view.

The strength of the imperial fleet comes from the shots of it's arrival... keep in mind this is the force being led by the Executor. Other formations could be moving in from other vectors and be totally outside our field of view. Not to mention that other forces could easily be beyond visual range (and visual range is just a few hundred to a few thousand kilometers, in space that is next to nothing).

 

On that point, you're assuming that each of those sectors is of equal importance and rates an equal military presence. I seem to recall an anecdote involving Napoleon Bonaparte criticizing one of his generals for evenly spacing his troops in defensive positions along the French border. Military forces do not spread themselves out in a nice, even distribution across an area without regard to terrain or potential threats. Sector 000 or Kuat are going to rate a higher concentration of forces than say, some backwater corner of the Outer Rim with no resources or large population centers. In Legends we certainly had an example of an Imperial Sector (Hutt Space, which admittedly had more autonomy than most Imperial sectors) that could only field a handful of second-line warships for an offensive action. I'd be willing to bet that while 24 ISDs was what the planners on Coruscant wanted every Sector Fleet to have, a lot either never got those ships or they were transferred to Oversector commands.

I'm a little confused by the references to "planetary sectors" and "freestanding subsectors" - my understanding from Legends was that sectors (the ~1,024 "regional" sectors referred to) contained about 50 worlds on average and were placed under the control of a Moff with an assigned Sector Fleet/Army. Individual systems/planets were a level of organization below that, but had no fixed allotment of ships or troops (Garqi, for instance, had a grand total of four TIE/ln Fighters for space defense). Oversectors in Legends were fluid; while originally based on the twenty regional commands established in the Clone Wars the Tarkin Doctrine saw oversectors shifted or merged to accommodate changing Rebel threats.

As for the cost, building the ships is one thing - maintaining, fueling, supplying, and crewing them is a whole other beast, not to mention the costs of maintaining sufficient garrison forces to control planets (and since this is the Empire, the number of COMPNOR/ISB agents needed to watch all those regular Navy and Army personnel). As I stated some time back, I think that's one reason why in the new canon the New Republic didn't put ISDs into service - for the same number of trained personnel, they could crew seven MC80s. The logistical costs of maintaining the Imperial military likely dwarfed the construction costs for ships and weapons.

 

Where did you get this 20 oversectors number?... there's not even that much space in the galaxy...and not even that many moffs in canon. (For example, the Outer Rim is an oversector). All I said, was that there are at least confirmed to be at least 20 moffs in canon, each with their own sector and sector group (of an army and fleet like in legends).

so with at least 20 sector groups X 25 ISD's is 500 ISD's plus 100 or 200 ISD's for expansion (like Thrawn's 7th fleet or Vader's Death Squadron) and to protect special critical locations (such as Kuat) is around 700 ISD's.

Also, I recall someone either in this thread or the one we currently have sage in-depth http://boards.theforce.net/threads/size-of-the-imperial-navy.50049609/ addressing how the empire would not need to deploy more ships to battle at endor if they had 25,000 ISD's. Yes, yes, they would employ more ships to battle if you have 25 ISD's at endor and 24,000 more to spare. Especially, if you're losing the battle!!!

If they had so many ISD's why didn't they use more than 6 at hoth or deploy more at scariff (one of the empire's most important data vaults). My theory is like i've said the about the small imperial fleet concept I subscribe to, the entire imperial fleet was small, so moving more ships from another moff's sector fleet would be suicide with the empire in chaos (and the rebels gaining more and more support across the galaxy by day). Those 25 or more ISD's at endor are the only one's they can spare. Especially, since we saw after endor people freely celebrating all over the galaxy.

 

*Checks wookieepedia to double check his numbers, discovers a slight error (1.5 member worlds instead of 1.8), also finds a number for 'colonies' at 69 million for the Galactic Empire. If there are only regional sectors, each with say... 50 worlds, that'd be 30,000 regional sectors. If we go with 125 (the rough number derived from the Hand of Thrawn duology) that equals 12,000 sectors.

While it's not really clear... my interpretation of what canon and legends gives us... the Galactic Empire's organization goes this way.
~20 Oversectors (sort of official... derived from the 20 'sectors' of the Clone Wars Sector Armies, there are 35 Grand Moffs listed on Wookieepedia, but some of these wouldn't be serving at the same time)
1,024 Regional Sectors (official number in legends, each has a senator in the Old Republic senate. When the senate is dissolved, the regional governors take over - most are Moffs)
~12,000 Planetary Sectors/Subsectors and Freestanding Subsectors (unofficial number, each has a non-voting representative based on 125 member worlds per 'sector' possibly ruled by some sort of planetary governor or lower-ranking moff, the Moddell Sector under Moff Jerjerrod is one example)

That's something I mostly agree with. I think Imperial planners wanted a minimum of 24 star destroyers per sector group plus 2,000+ support ships, but the Imperial Sourcebook makes it clear that their standard doctrine is designed to allow for much larger formations. Using the rules in the Imperial Sourcebook, the maximum size of a sector group (i.e. fully augmented at all levels) should have 80 star destroyers and over 42,000 ships. I wouldn't expect a sector group that big except for perhaps the Imperial Center Sector Group. In fact, I'm pretty sure they never met their minimum number for most sectors. Hell, we've got evidence in both Canon and Legends sources that the Empire pressed all sorts of ships into service to fill out their order of battle - just think about those Gozanti-class cruisers the Empire uses for almost everything in Rebels. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them are ships that were seized from pirates and local planetary forces in the early days of the Empire. Not to mention CR90s and other vessels that aren't exactly new production ships.

Reading through the Imperial Sourcebook makes it pretty clear that Oversectors are supposed to have a 'Sector Group' of their own, as I would think a Grand Moff could call upon the fleet of the regional sectors under the oversector this seems almost excessive, except perhaps if the Oversector force is being used as a sort of fire-brigade or mobile reserve for those sectors. A similar arrangement could exist if the constituent subsectors of the Regional Sectors have sector groups, with the Regional Sector Group acting as a mobile reserve for those subordinate formations.

*Sigh* This gets into the maximist/minimalist debate that has always existed in Star Wars, however... let me explain this a couple different ways.

Lets say you're the Moff of the Chommell Sector (I'm going with Chommell as it's a sector we know a lot about). This sector has 36 member systems, 40,000 'settled dependencies' (minor stations and colonies), and hundreds of thousands of empty star systems. You have 25 star destroyers plus support ships at your disposal to defend and patrol the sector. So you spread your ships around to protect assets, and keep a bit bigger set then normal at Naboo, because sometimes Palpatine likes to visit his old home.

Someone attacks Naboo for reasons... how many ships do you have above Naboo?
2 Star Destroyers and some support ships. Considering this is Palpatine's homeworld... I think Scarif being defended by just 2 ISDs is about right. As your other ships are spread around the sector, it takes time to get them to come to your aid.

As for the total size of the Imperial Navy - remember, this is a navy designed to patrol a Galaxy. Our own galaxy is supposedly home to 40 billion earth-like planets with around 250 billion stars. The idea that the Galactic Empire could even call itself a 'galactic empire' when it has less than 1,000 Star Destroyers is laughable. Even with 25,000 ISDs, they'd be hard pressed to even impose a little authority on the galaxy. Just to do customs duties you'd need thousands, no, millions of ships - and they had millions of ships... just most were small customs patrol ships that they never really show outside of those Gozanti-class ships on Rebels.

Even with those millions, most planets will be lucky to have just one of those Gozanti-class ships in orbit. As they say on TVtropes: SciFi writers have no sense of scale. Galactic scale things are mind boggling.

 

Remember we're talking about star wars here...what's portrayed on screen is never at all accurate to actual science and I'd highly recommend Legend of the Galactic Heroes to anyone who wants to see this more "realistic" interpretation of a sci fi galactic empire vs the free planets alliance... (It's actually is another version of a star wars). But, yeah the navies in those are much more well adept to occupy a "galaxy" with millions of ships who do realize that they can fight in more than a linear way.
My argument has never been in the realistic sense, it's always been in the sense of what we see on screen and what we see on screen is never practical or at all realistic. As such I always base my argument in a "minimalists" view.

 

Legend of the Galactic Heroes is fantastic!
It suffers from Enders Game syndrome though. They assume that through direct instant communication a fleet becomes a swarm with only one queen commanding.

My personal opinion is still that captains of such massive ships are individually minded and will take more ship to ship based choices.

I agree on the scale. These are fleets spanning entire universes made up of over 4000 ships per fleet. Hell, they don't even mind when they lose a fleet or two. On the grand scale it doesn't even tip it one way or the other.

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It's all explained in the movie really. The Emperor is laying a TRAP for the rebels. Therefore he is not going to station a fleet that could overwhelm the combined rebel fleet or they will not attempt their attack on the DSII.

When the rebel fleet engages the imperial fleet at Endor, the Emperor doesn't care as he is indifferent to collateral damages to the fleet, he is busy turning Luke, and he is overconfident (as Luke mentions). Piett may not have had the authority to call in reinforcements, reinforcement may not have been set-up prior to the battle, or he may not have wanted to call-in reinforcements as it would make him look incapable.

 

@Greybook I think it's more than 4,000 ships in a fleet XD especially at some of the battles we see it could be well 50,000 v 50,000 or more! in some great nonlinear space combat and great tacticians. and really you don't believe that in the future a admiral can't communicate with all his ships? I do admit this would fall apart when the fleet is taking heavy losses.

My point being is Star Wars fleet combat doesn't work like it should to your realistic standards like in Legend of the Galactic Heroes. It shows very small linear space combat, and as such should be treated with a small scale.
One point i could never get to the maximists argument, when the first Death Star's Destruction in both canon and legends, the empire had to rush many cadets out of the academies and onto the front lines. This does not make much sense if the empire gigantic and had a billions and or trillions of personnel, why the loss of 2 million was such a toll on them? (I can understand the loss of the Imperial Joint Chiefs on the Death Star, but not the rest of the troops).
Also, where are you all getting this number of 20 Grand Moffs, there's only been 3 (4 if you count one who self-appointed himself) in canon. And the size of an Oversector is huge (For Example, The Whole Outer Rim is an oversector). I know the map of the galaxy well... it can not fit 20 oversectors in the known galaxy.

 

Oversectors vary in size. The Outer Rim's Oversector was created by merging several Clone Wars era Oversectors.

 

Oversectors vary in size.

 

To be fair, ESB straight-up told us that ships moved fast, since the Falcon "could be on the other side of the galaxy by now." We just didn't believe them because longer travel times are more narratively interesting. (So are ships being incommunicado while in hyperspace, btw).

Speaking of narratively interesting, this is another reason reason why I like the old length for the Executor-class. 19km is REALLY BIG, and limits the plausibility of even a fleet of smaller ships taking it down.

 

Just made this... decided not to include the support fleet and deepdock yards as I don't think the FSCVs would even come close to fitting.

Star Destroyers are represented as Imperial-classes, heavy cruisers are represented as dreadnought-classes, light cruisers are represented arquitens-classes, escort frigates are represented as Nebulon Bs, Evakamar-KDY transports are represented as Consolidator-class Assault Ships from Fractalsponge, and there are 100 BFF-1 bulk freighters for each fleet to represent their 'logistical tail' of 100 ships in each Force Support unit.

 

I know this is jumping well ahead, but this really shows how ill-prepared the First Order is to hold the galaxy. They simply don't have the numbers, ship variety, or logistical depth to occupy the entire galaxy without being backed up by a superweapon.

 

I'm sorry, did you break into Lucasfilm headquarters and steal some information the rest of us aren't privy to? How exactly do you know the numbers and ship variety of the First Order?

Sure the FO hasn't been shown with any support ships in the new movies . . . but neither was the Empire in the entire OT. Then the EU came up with a bunch of support ships and said "trust us, they were all just off screen during the movies". For all we know the FO could have unseen support ships as well, and in fact the Poe Dameron comics have shown a few. And it's worth noting that even if the EU did invent a bunch of support ships, Star Destroyers were still the mostly commonly used design just because they were in the movies. The same way the Stormtrooper corp was said to be a small part of the Imperial Army, but Stormtroopers are seen way more often than Imperial Army Troopers.

And even if they did give us exact numbers for the forces of the FO, (which again, they haven't), whatever that figure was, it would be as hotly debated as the "25,000 Star Destroyers" or "3 million clone troopers" figures. Frankly I prefer it when they don't give us exact numbers and keep things vauge.

TLDR: I think you're making huge assumptions about the numbers and make up of the First Order, when really we only have about the same amount of information we had just after ESB came out.

 

If the FO had anywhere near the numbers of the Empire, that would really be a head-scratcher. The Empire had the whole galaxy to draw on for resources including a massive civilian tax base. The FO doesn't control anywhere near that amount of territory or resources; the information we do have suggests they went with a quality over quantity approach to compensate for a lack of numbers. That's with the New Republic Fleet having been greatly disarmed, which suggests that absent the Hosnian Cataclysm the FO's fleet was numerically inferior to that of the New Republic. Odds are the FO doesn't have a tenth the ships that the Empire commanded at its height; in the Battlefront II "Resurrection" DLC Shriv brings up the data from the Retribution and notes that the FO has "hundreds" of capital ships - which, if we're talking Resurgent-class battlecruisers with a few dozen Mandator-IV siege dreadnoughts in the mix, is a nasty threat to a New Republic Fleet that's just had the heart ripped out of it. If things had gone according to plan and Starkiller Base's second strike had taken out the Resistance at D'Qar, Snoke would have been able to force the rest of the Republic's surrender at gunpoint and use the fleet to mop up.

As far as the Imperial fleet size, I doubt they needed manned patrols in every part of Imperial space - we've repeatedly seen how much the Empire depended on probe droids for surveillance. Keep one or several forces of capital ships in a sector where they can reach a target in a matter of hours or days, use probe droids, recon craft, and surveillance posts to locate threats, and dispatch a concentrated force to eliminate targets when they appear. A Sector Fleet with its capital ships spread out across its territory would run the risk of a few MC80s operating as a concentrated force being able to defeat them in detail.