Lit From Endor to Exegol - The State of the Galaxy Discussion Thread (Tagged Victory's Price Spoilers)

According to Aftermath: Life Debt, only two ships were destroyed by the Death Star II.

In Legends, at least three were known to be destroyed (though the number may have been as many as five).

 

And according to the Essential Atlas there were 70 million systems (presuming the same goes up for Canon) with some sort of association to the Empire, which stretches those 25,000 star destroyers even thinner, so all in all it's a viable number for an entity of this size.

 

Concerning the issue of how many worlds are in the Empire, I favour the side which is comfortable with >1,000,000 of them, for a couple of reasons.

First, it jives with the science fictional pedigree of Star Wars. George Lucas clearly took inspiration from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series (for example, Coruscant is obviously an expy of Trantor) and in that story, the Galactic Empire consisted of more than 25 million inhabited worlds. So in comparison to some of its genre peers, the Galaxy Far Far Away is working on a familiar scale.

Second, and more importantly, I prefer to think of the Star Wars Galaxy as containing millions of worlds, because it makes the behaviour of the Empire more rational and explicable. The fact that even the sane and competent Imperial leaders are so casual about wrecking or even outright destroying worlds for purely short-term gain is easier to comprehend in light of the sheer abundance of habitable planets present in the galaxy.

It also provides a certain rationale for why the Imperials are so obsessed with super-weapons. In a galaxy with millions of worlds, even a starfleet containing tens of thousands of capital ships, and billions of soldiers, is not powerful enough to effectively enforce a tyranny based on pure machtpolitik. You need to either make concessions or acquire force multipliers. And the Empire is not in the business of making concessions.

 

well maybe this way will work.
Let us all find out how many star system is in the milky way galaxy. I say star systems in that not all star system have habitable planets. Then maybe divide that number by 10000?

Everyone agree that GFFA is the same size galaxy as our own?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_habitability

On 4 November 2013, astronomers reported, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars and red dwarfs within the Milky Way.[13][14] 11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting Sun-like stars.[15] The nearest such planet may be 12 light-years away, according to the scientists.[13][14]

We can't know - but based on surveys, we can estimate. An estimate given there, is 40 billion planets in habitable zones (including red dwarf stars) 11 billion of those orbiting "sunlike" stars.

 

No. Why would we? It is a different (not to mention fictional) galaxy that is far far away from our own, and everything that happened in it took place a long time ago. Comparisons to the Milky Way are irrelevant. You might as well be comparing our planet's geography to Tolkien's Middle Earth.

It can be as large or as small as the storytellers want it to be. And that's the only relevant metric.

 

supposedly Tokien's middle earth is our planet.
But I see your point.

 

@Axendale I could see that Imperial "what measure is a planet? logic and mindset applying even with 10's of thousands. And just because Lucas got inspiration from Asimov (amongst other sources) doesn't mean it needs to be exactly like his work. (After all Lucas also originally thought of the Empire always being an Empire, and didn't think of the Republic transforming into it until later). But anyway, let's ignore debating the exact size of the galaxy for now. I don't want to get too involved with exact numbers, as this sort of thing can get tricky in star wars (see Carida's population of 23 million, or the Grand Army of the Republic apparently containing 3 million troopers). Man I really wish Sci Fi authors would just give us general figures such as "thousands" or "millions" so we wouldn't have these problems.

My point is this: The Imperial armed forces are big, and the galaxy is really big. Even with that in mind, I can accept the Alliance defeating the Empire and taking that territory a year after Endor, due to a number of factors including massive civilian uprising and Imperial infighting. What I find hard to believe is that they did it with only 20-30 capital ships, plus whatever they could manufacture in a year. My proposed solution is that there are other Rebel cells that could not get in contact with high command (that's why they weren't at Endor), that joined up when the NR became more public and added their hidden forces to the NR fleets and armies.

 

I think it 's pretty unrealistic for the NR to take control of the whole galaxy (or at least the whole galaxy the Empire controlled.

What about travel time? Even with .5 speed of the falcon, you would probably need close to 5 years just to travel from one side of galaxy to another non stop.

Look at all the wars in RL. I mean wars and not local skirmishes or bloodless coups.

 

Hyperspace travel time has pretty much always been "at the speed the plot requires". Which in universe can explained with things like "hidden routes" or technobabble about hyperspace shifts or anomalies.

 

West End Games provided the travel times for the Old EU. It takes 15 days to travel from the Outer Rim territory to the Core Worlds with the Falcon. So, one month to travel across the galaxy at .5.

Not five years.

2 months to cross the entire galaxy in a straight line if you have a more standard x1 hyperdrive.

In the original West End Games interpretation of things, they also stated that Han and Leia were traveling to Bespin for two weeks 1/2 weeks at sub-light speed and Luke had about a month of training under Yoda.

 

Yes as the times go by by it would be totally confusing which one is the real Empire.

Is the FO the Empire? Is one or two planet still ruled by their Imperial governors? What about this Imperial captain still running an ISD fighting a hopeless guerilla war/turned bandit?

 

The Empire ended when Mas Amedda dissolved it. It's basically what happened when General Lee and Jefferson Davis signed the treaty that dissolved the Confederacy and turned it over to the New Republic.

The First Order is like if a bunch of KKK members founded a settlement on a deserted Caribbean Island.

Or MOON NAZIS (everyone should check out Iron Sky's trailers)

 

1 Million-ish habitable worlds. 100 (1000??) times that uninhabitable systems. 25K ISDs. Hundreds of thousand smaller ships.

Sounds reasonable to me.

 

Well most of the prequel dialogue (and other works) make it seem more like thousands or hundreds of thousands of planets are part of republic/"civilized" space. But let's ignore that: my problem is the same whether its thousands or millions.

The problem is because writers and authors want to use iconic ships from the films (making it seem like fleet is mostly star destroyer's), and most stories show those ships as being difficult to take down, it stretches credibility if what we see at End or is indeed the majority of capital ships at the Rebels disposal.

For the thousandth time, I have no issue with the rebels winning 1 year after Endor, but it stretches credibility that they did it with the measley fleet seen at Endor (and especially given the large fleets they field at Kuat and Jakuu, no way all of that was built in 1 year). There must have been smaller cells with more ships high command couldn't contact till after Endor

 

Unless the smaller cells were building executor equivalent ships none stop it still boggle the mind.

 

You can't change the fleet at Endor not being the bulk of the Rebel Alliance fleet or you pretty much ruin the entirety of the storyline.

Of course, the issue is the Rebellion ISN'T conquering the worlds with fleets. It can't do that because it's a Rebellion and that's not how these things went. In this case, they conquered worlds by diplomacy. They went to planets and persuaded them to turn against the Empire and then said people turned over their own forces. We saw it in SHATTERED EMPIRE with Leia and other diplomats going to Naboo and other places.

Hell, if Naboo alone turned over its Sector Fleet that is a massive boon to the Rebellion's forces and it's highly likely many other worlds did.

 

I played Star Wars rebellion back back in the day. Playing as the Empire, I always sent all of my fleet and blocked Yavin 4 first thing I do. So that the ultra good diplomats of the Rebels can't escape the blockade.

Wins every time.

 

Here's the thing- I don't think we necessarily can peg the number of capital ships at Endor in either fleet. What occurred "off screen" or "out of frame" could capture a lot of stuff. Furthermore, I'm someone that can accept that VFX limitations at the time prevented the fleet battle from having hundreds and hundreds of capital ships. George Lucas stated as much in interviews around the time of ROTS. He now had the technology to make battles epic.

I do believe that Endor contained the vast majority of the Alliance's capital ships. But I don't for one second think that the overall fleet was just in the dozens. Ditto the Imperial fleet.

Anyways, this is the sort of things only fans lie us all obsess over. The Rebel Fleet, for all intents and purposes, is "as large as the story requires".

--Adm. Nick

 

Not necessarily. You don't need a ssd to destroy a regular star destroyer. It can be done with fighters, bombers, frigates, and maybe a capital ship or two, but it will probably cost a lot of lives and ships to accomplish it, depending on the author.

Not necessarily. If makes sense if it's the main Alliance fleet, but that there were smaller Rebel cells unable to contact them till after Endor. It allows the "bringing everything they have to stop the DS2" plot, while still making it plausible that they pulled a bunch of ships out of nowhere when Endor was won.

Again going with the example of the Rebellion board game, I understand that civilian uprisings and diplomacy can do a lot of work. But at some point you're going to need some decent warships too.

WHAT sector fleet? Naboo itself was demilitarized, and the Empire is going to nationalize any planetary security forces that could pose a threat to it. Sure smaller militias and fleets probably slipped through the cracks and were a big help, but except for defecting/surrendering Imperial governors, they will probably only have smaller ships and fighters.

Bottom line, in the movie there's a small amount of Rebel capital ships. Yet Kuat and Jakku show hundreds or thousands. Solutions:

• Those ships were all built and their crews trained in less than a year. Even with the swell of resources and support after Endor, it's unlikely.
• They got them from civilian uprisings/militias/fleets. Possible, but civilian uprisings only take you so far before you need something that can take down a Star Destroyer (and since there are many Star Destroyers, you need many "somethings")
• The best option is Rebel cells stockpiling resources, but being unable to join up till after Endor when public support made hiding their bases a non issue

Or like Nick said, pretending that what we saw onscreen was only a fraction of the hundreds of ships there. As he said, "large as the story requires"

 

What I imagine is going to confuse a lot of EU folk who are used to thinking of the Empire as a monolithic block. It's very likely the majority of military forces in Sectors are going to be loyal to the Imperial government which joins the New Republic.

Once the Moff is deposed and you're in the Chommel Sector, what do you do when the Queen tells you they've sided with the New Republic.

And the Empire has no leader?

The Senators and elected leaders of worlds have authority with the Emperor gone. In short, the Imperial Senate's legiimacy means that it probably has as much of the Empire as Mas Amedda behind it.

 

Could the Moffs (or anyway certain Moffs) be those Kings/Queens?