Size of the imperial fleet

Has it ever been stated how many ships the Empire had at its height?

 

The Empire had about 25000 Imperial-class Star Destroyers at its height.

 

At its might it had 25,000 Star Destroyers and millions of support ships and other capitol class ships.

 

Support ships for the Imperial Navy during the Galactic Civil War would number in the hundreds of thousands I would think. Remember, its a big galaxy, and not every system warranted a Star Destroyer. So we're talking Victory-class Star Destroyers, Interdictors, Nebulon B Class Escort Frigates, Modified Frigates, Dreadnaughts, Corellian Corvettes and gunships, various sytem patrol ships, bulk cruisers, Lancer class frigates, Carrack class Cruisers, and many many more.

All sorts of fun stuff to shoot at if you're a Rebel.

 

According to the Imperial sourcebook,the Empire had over a million warships. Emphasis on over.

 

Yeah they had over a million, but they were all outdated, that's why the empire lost, the alliance had better ships.

 

Uhm no. Lancers,Strike Class Cruisers ,Imperial Class SDs,Nebulon B frigates,Interdictors,and escort carriers were all top of the line ships during the rebellion era. It was the Alliance that used old out of date ships...

 

I'm gonna disagree there DN.

The Imperial fleet was top of the line. Imperial Star Destroyers were the foremost combat starship in the galaxy, topped only by Super Star Destroyers. While they did employ older ships, Corvettes, Frigates, Dreadnaughts, so did the Alliance. The Alliance was in all respects a ragtag fleet, the only modern warships being the Mon Calamari cruisers, most of which were converted passenger liners to begin with. While one can argue that the overlapping shield systems of the Mon Cal vessels did have their advantages compared to the exposed generators of a Star Destroyer, in open combat, without starfighter support, the weapons systems of an Imperial Star Destroyer, Mark I or II, were incredibly powerful and would defeat an MC80 cruiser.

As for starfighters, only part of your argument stands up. Early Rebellion fighters, such as Ywing and the Z95, were in fact obsolete in comparison to TIE Fighters, which were faster and in much greater numbers. However, with introduction of the T-65 Xwing Fighter at the Battle of Turkana a year before Yavin, the Rebels gained the upper hand in that respect. However, it was soon countered by the arrival of TIE Inteceptors and TIE Advanced fighters. When it comes to starfighters, production is a major issue, and the Rebellion did not have the production abilities of the Empire. Xwings were excellent fighters and had, in fact, been developed for Imperial service, but the design team at Incom defected with the first prototype. The introduction of the Awing and the Bwing later on the war, though not in great numbers, gave the Rebellion an advantage in hyperspace, shield equipped, multi faceted starfighters. The Rebellion also implemented rigorous pilot training for their Starfighter Command, and, while the Imperial fighter training programs were also very exclusive and difficult, the lack of shields on Imperial fighters made surviving a TIE tour of duty very difficult. Unless, of course, you're me and you beat that game with little difficulty.

There was an excellent thread a few days ago by Faraday, in which i completely disagreed with what he had to say about SD's. However, some good stuff was said in that thread if you could dig it up.

Good call Matthew Trias

 

3 guys stuffed into a TIE cockpit ; )

 

According to the Imperial Sourcebook a sector was patrolled by three to five dozen ISDs.

According to the TM of the DeathStar those ships stayed inside their sectors and were only working as coastguards.

So we get at least 36,000 ISDs in sectorfleets.

From the ISB and other sources we also know, that planets have their own systemdefenses. Examples are Bakura, Coruscant, Kuat and so on (note that Bakuras fleet consisted of six hyperspace-capable ships and it was an average outer rim-colony). If only a tenth of the capital worlds the empire has under its control is guarded by only ONE ISD, we get another 100,000 ships.

Not to mention the ships hidden in the Deep Core (DE-Series), the ships of the 250 sectors hidden in the Unknown Regions and all the other fleets the empire uses to increase its territory (200 worlds per day).

If we calculate the 200 ISDs and the 1,000 worlds left in SotP for 1 Million worlds at the empires height we get 200,000 ISDs.

25,000 ISDs is actually the LOWEST known number.

 

Exactly how many Imp ships called the UR home? And at what point? Remember Palpie was not associated with Thrawns Phelenxe.

 

A standard Sector group had 1,600 combat ships, with 24 ISDs. There were 'Thousands' of sector groups. Even taking the minimum number (1,000), we have 24,000 ISDs, and 1,600,000 combat ships total. at 2,000 the figures are 48,000 and 3,200,000- a lot of ships!

 

Yep. Remember those are numbers for STANDARD sector fleets. The size of a fleet may have varied depending on how volatile a sector was.

 

Since we have sectors with around 340 worlds (Nubian) and also sectors with more than 1,000 worlds (Chancellor Valorums sector) different numbers of Stardestroyers for different sectors make sense.

Three dozen are still twelve more than 24.

And you have still only the ships in the sectorfleets.

 

Mystery White Boy, while I believe your info is correct I don't see the proof. In my view how can a rag tag band of cruisers and fighters beat the entire Imperial fleet at Endor, which included a super star destroyer,how could the ships not be better? It's this or the alliance has better pilots and commanders. But even after endor the alliance beat the empire time and time again. Even in Spector of the past, Admiral Pealleon admits that the empire is defeated because they have nothing that could possibly defeat the republic.

 

One of the reasons for the Empire's defeat at Endor is that the Emperor held the Imperial fleet back and allowed only the starfighters to attack the Rebels, because he had his "surprise" in store for them. The rebel starfighters and the imperial starfighters duked it out for a while, and the surprise was revealed.

when lando and ackbar decide to attack the Imperial Fleet, the Imperial Navy is taken by surprise. The Rebels are outnumbered, but their attack is unexpected, quick, and unconventional. Starship commanders never had brought the ships in that close together, nevermind large fleets like that. It was a new tactic. It was called the Ackbar Slash.

Another thing, a point that the EU has proven, was that the Emperor was controlling the imperial fleet, coordinating it. With him distracted by the Vader/Skywalker battle, and later dead, (as well as the Death Star destroyed) what remained of the Imperial Fleet at Endor was thrown into disarray. The proof of this is when Thrawn tells Palleaon of his plan to use C'Boath as a coordinator for the Imperial Fleet. He tells Palleaon that the Fleet at Endor was decimated because it did not have the Emperor's direct control. Palleaon questions this but soon remembers the actuality and plausability of this suggestion and accepts it.

After Endor, the Rebels did not 'always' win. There were times when they were beaten. But the reason the Empire, still large enough to rule the galaxy, did not rebound from the loss at Endor was the Emperor. With the Emperor gone, with Vader as well, the central core of the Empire was destroyed. There was no succession to the throne, there was no recognized leader. The Empire fell into internal disarray. Isard failed, Sate Pestage was disposed, Thrawn was defeated, Daala was defeated, the Warlords were all defeated. The only Imperial to come close to bringing the Empire back to its full glory was the ressurected Emperor, but eventually, he too failed. All the while this was occuring, the Empire still existed, its ever diminishing size and military, without a centralized government. Nobody was around to hold it together and it became what it is today. The Emperor was the Empire, and without him there is nothing.

 

DN,that is because the Emperor used the Force to control his ships and men.When he died the Empire didn't know what to do,causing confusion which the Rebels used against them.Later on when Pellaeon took over,the Empire had better tactics but fewer ships than the now superior NR which is why they were defeated.

 

I have to agree.

The imperials usually have the better plans, better tactics and will to win.

How often has the rebellion won due to sheer luck?

Endor - has anybody ever mentioned the Ewoks in the rebelbriefing?

X-Wing-Series - The rebels conquer Coruscant only, because Isard wants them to get the planet

Sluis Van - come on, how big was the possibility for Lando Calrissian to show up with his controlcodes for the moleminers???

Bilbringi - Without the smugglers and Rukh killing Thrawn, this battle would have ended very different

DarkEmpire - At the end of DE II and through the entire DE III the empire is almost totally back in power over the entire galaxy

Guess what brings the downfall of Palpatine - not the rebels but the treachery of one of his own bodyguards

BlackFleetCrisis - okay, no imperials there (as main villain), but without the imperial soldiers getting back control over their ships, how do you think the last battle in this series would have ended?

And so on and so on...

 

If we use a median number for ISD's, 30,000, that would be 2,160,000 TIE fighters. Wow! I think i remember there being a crew of five thousand people for an ISD, correct me if im wrong, that would be 150,000,000 crewmembers!

 

Not to mention the Battle of Yavin in Darksaber, which I still can't swallow. 1 SSD and 20 VSD's pound away at a retrofitted MC90...and fail to destroy it! That's bias at its best.

 

Warlord_Ken, remember the MC90 did just about nothing, it was Dorsk81 who saved the planet.

 

It seems odd that star destroyers would be such a small part of the fleet. They are the most commonly seen military starships.

 

The crew-number of an ISD (without troops) is around 37,000.

For its size the ship is heavily undercrewed.

Compare it to a Nimitz-Class-Aircraft-Carrier: Smaller than a Carrack-Frigate (with a lenght of 335 meters), who has a crew of around 5,000 men.

Perhaps it would be helpful, if we name our sources together with the quote.

If take the LOWEST known number of 25,000 ISDs and multiply it with 37,000 we get 925 million crewers.

Thats 0.14 percent of the 650 billion (american billion) inhabitans of Coruscant during Palpatines reign.

If you compare this with the armed forces of US today (268 million inhabitens and 2 million men under arms?), where we get 0,7 percent (thats five times as many) or Cuwait, with 1 million inhabitans and 20,000 men under arms (before the gulfwar), where we get a factor of even 2 percent (thats 14 times as much) and we are only speaking of Coruscant, it seems Palpatines empire was rather UNDER-militarizised.