Rogue One [Spoilers] Inconsistencies with the rest of the saga

There's a reason why historically armies and fleets tend to group together into a large force when engaging in a battle, rather than remain separated. The concept is called force concentration:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_concentration

Outnumbering the enemy acts as a force multiplier, which means your army is going to accomplish more with less. Think of it this way: if the Empire really had 10,000+ SD's to call upon, why would they not spare a decent chunk of those for just a short while to, say, make really absolutely sure no rebels could escape the battle of Hoth. Imagine how devastating it would have been for the rebels to lose everyone in the base and all those ships. Luke Skywalker would have been killed or captured as well, ensuring he doesn't threaten the Empire later on. Whatever minor disruption to local control might have happened due to a handful more SD's being taken off their usual patrols would be easily outweighed by the damage done to the rebel cause. Same with Endor. We saw that, though outnumbered, the rebels were able to put up quite a fight with the ~30 SD's we saw on screen there, and that enough fighters survived the extended battle there to later fly into the Death Star superstructure and destroy the station. Now imagine if the rebels were fighting not 30, or 60, or 90 Star Destroyers, but 3,000. How long would the rebels have survived then?

To be fair, there could be reasons why massing forces beyond a certain point could be disadvantageous, like if there were a Star Wars equivalent of nuclear weapons (I guess that's what Death Stars are, but that wouldn't really apply to this situation since the rebels have no such weapons).

 

Guys, the imperial fleet didn't actually attack the rebels in ROTJ, they had orders only to prevent their escape. I n that context I would hardly say the rebels held their own against the imperial fleet. The rebels concentrated all their fleet onto just one SSD to give Han some time to get the shield down. They were effective here but the assumption is that if the shield generator was still up by the end of the movie, good bye to the rebel fleet.

The lines in the movie are all about just holding out long enough to achieve the mission. To destroy the Deathstar, the assumption is that the rebel fleet escaped soon after the DS was destroyed.

At the battle of endor the rebels had everything on the line. The imperials had an ambush set up, that's all.


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Um, after the death star begins firing, the rebels DO engage the star destroyers in close combat. It's quite clear both in the dialogue (Lando - "engage those star destroyers at point blank range") and in the visual effects (where you see rebel ships attacking and destroying star destroyers). And the fact is, the rebels took out the enemy flagship and at least several SD's that we see exploding on screen, while being at the disadvantage of having lost cruisers to the death star's fire. I would certainly call that holding their own.

 

Torib

I do admit, there is an inconsistency between what would logically make sense and what the film makers have been willing to put on the screen. In these cases we are mostly left to our own devices and whatever content creators of SW have the sense to address such issues.

There is something you have to consider, the Imperial Starfleet is guarding a galaxy that exists in three dimensions. Not an area, but a volume, not light years squared but light years cubed. Also keep in mind that the average time it takes to cross the galaxy from one end to the other is about two weeks.

Say there are 10,000 SDs in the Starfleet, they are not going to be spaced out evenly across the entire galaxy. The majority of those are going to be in the inner rim or otherwise known as the core worlds. The core worlds have been around for millennium, they have the most developed cultures, they have the longest history, they have the most galactic credits, they have the best of everything, they are the most important to the Empire. These are the planets that are going to have the most SDs. The planets themselves are very closer together so the fleets are going to be very concentrated. Same thing with the mid rim planets, albeit to a lesser degree. The outer rim? Bah, those planets aren't important, they're infested with pirates and scum and all of those planets are backwater. They're over a much greater area out so whatever number of SDs are in the outer rim are going to be more spread out. Although typically the crews should be more experienced.

In the old EU according to the Essential Guide to Warfare (which I do have a copy of) the 25 SDs that were at the BoE minus Death Squadron came from the local Moff. So which is better: to borrow 3,000 SDs from 120 moffs that may take a few days to get to Endor and will be gone from there posts for who knows how long until the Rebels attack or to borrow a decent number of SDs from the local moff that is close enough to dispatch a SD or two if the need arose and having a feakin operational Death Star II at your disposal. If the former you'd think that the Rebels would catch on pretty quick that something was up.

You also have to keep in mind that the BoE wasn't strictly a military battle. Palpatine's goal was to seduce Luke, the destruction of the Rebel fleet of a secondary goal to him. The Rebel fleet was barely holding its own and that's with the Imperial Fleet basically holding its fire for the first half of the battle. I do have to agree with OZQUAD44 this one.

To tie this into RO, I was somewhat disappointed that the SDs didn't engage at long range and basically waited until the Rebels were in their face to open fire, the BoE clearly shows that capital ships can engage at ranges of 100,000km. The other thing that was a disappointment was the lack of smaller capital ships on the Empire's side. There may be only 10,000 SDs but there must be hundreds of thousands if not millions of spaceships smaller than 1,000 meters in the Imperial Starfleet.

 

I doubt there is more than 1000 star destroyers probably a lot less in the imperial starfleet since what was it in a new hope that Han Sole said that'd "it'd take a thousand ships to blow up a planet" or something like that can't remember...
Since in canon I believe there are 20 moffs at least and say each moff's sector fleet is 20 SD's with at least an additional 7 fleets (from Rebels we know there's at least 7 fleets) I'd say 500 SD's at least even then we never see more than 3 star destroyers ever engaging the rebels excluding BoE and on Hoth where there were 6 star destroyers

 

HAN


The entire starfleet couldn't destroy the whole planet. It'd take a thousand ships with more fire power than I've... (ever seen)


That's the canon information we got, everything else is headcanon and/or wishful thinking.

 

Point taken about the size of the galaxy, but I don't agree that the Core worlds are necessarily going to have 10 to 100 times more star destroyers stationed there than are being used in the battles in the Outer Rim. Generally, military forces tend to be deployed where they are needed. See, by your logic, someone today upon seeing a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier patrolling in the Persian Gulf would have to conclude that if there's one carrier that far away from home, that therefore there must be dozens of carriers stationed in the major cities of New York and Washington D.C. Of course, in reality that would be a huge waste of military resources, even if we had that many carriers to begin with.

Or for a completely different example we could look at the distribution of legions in the Roman Empire, where it would take weeks or months to travel from one part of the empire to another. In the reign of Augustus, there were 29 legions in total. Only one of those, the Praetorian Guard, was stationed in all of Italy, the wealthy heart of the empire. There were also some urban cohorts and marines stationed in Rome, so in total, there might have been something like 5-10% of the army stationed somewhere in Italy. In contrast, the German border, the backwater of the empire, was home to 10 legions (until three of them disastrously got wiped out, anyway). That's around 30% of all Roman forces stationed at one remote border territory.

The way I see it, with these inflated star destroyer numbers one of the following things must be true: either the rebellion is outnumbered by two to three orders of magnitude, and thus doesn't pose a credible threat to the empire any more than ISIL or Al Qaeda does to the U.S. military (which makes the events of the movies perplexing to say the least and contradicts much of the exposition in ANH and ROTJ in particular) or the rebellion likewise possesses a similarly larger force than we see on screen (which still bothers me because it retroactively makes the space battle in ROTJ more of a sideshow rather than a decisive battle). It also becomes hard to understand, if there are 10,000 star destroyers, why the Emperor was so concerned about Luke Skywalker in ESB ("He could destroy us") and why he would choose to stake his life and the future of his empire on a tiny backwater garrison fleet that is only a tiny proportion of the resources at his disposal, especially considering that the entire gambit was a trap that he devised specifically to destroy the Rebel Alliance and end the threat to his rule.

 

A decent start though Han in canon would have no reason to be able to give a good estimate of the amount of ISDs. Legends maybe a bit more cause he was an Imp.

 

Still I don't find the number of Star Destroyers in the Imperial Fleet to be as anywhere high as it was in legends cause simply the Empire (even if they're arrogant) would devote more than SD's we see in the movies and in the tv series to engage and hunt the rebels. Plus we don't see many SD's in the most combat zones (Outer Rim) as I said before I find there's probably only around 500 sd's in the imperial flleet spread out throughout the at least 20 moff's and their sectors and the at least 7 separate fleets

 

I think the number in legends only works if you stick with Legends hyperspace and how the time worked with that. In the New EU ships can get from one end of the galaxy to another in like a day. In Legends a day long journey would take you maybe a 5th the distance one in new canon would. In Legends I can buy that there are thousands of ISDs out there that are not present at massive engagements or not giving relief quickly cause the hyperdrives take a long time. In canon it would make no sense for there to be that many around.

 

I agree with your point on how the new canon has seemed to make the galaxy a lot smaller/faster to travel in thus I don't think the Empire has that many star destroyers for such small galaxy wide journey's now. And the empire never committed large numbers of star destoyers in areas or engagements compared to the Republic. Their overconfidence as well doesn't make me feel like they really overproduced star destroyers at least till post battle of yavin

 

At least one newcanon source (Star Wars Uprising) has stated the Empire had 25000+ Imperial-class star destroyers at its height:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial-class_Star_Destroyer

At the height of its power, the Galactic Empire operated over 25,000 of these ships.[4]

 

I hate that canon so much... cause it doesn't explain why the empire so many times would only send so few star destroyers to engagements

 

TCF-1138
Can we move it to another thread then? It is an interesting discussion I would like to continue. Besides , I haven't had a chance to write my counter argument yet.

 

Has Galen really helped anything, to take another 13 years to build Death Star?

 

If the station had been completed before the alliance had organised any viable military opposition to it or the Empire, then of course delaying it for that time was helpful.

 

I'd've loved to have seen Venators as escorts for the SDs.

Rebels have Imperial light cruisers too that would have been good to see.

In fact I wish the SDs had been a mix of Imp1 and ESB Imp2 versions.

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Tarkin said as much to Krennic: "You have made time an ally of the Rebellion."

 

It's weird that in a new hope alderaan explodes instantly, but in rogue one, Jedha and scarif have a shock wave and explodes shortly after.

 

Because they didn't use the Death Star's superlaser at full power. Tarkin himself said in Rogue One: "That won't be necessary. We need a statement, not a manifesto. The Holy City will suffice for today."

Then in ANH, he said, "I think it's time we tested the FULL power of this station."

 

Agree with this. People seem to forget it. Besides, of course advancements in technology and CGI allow filmmakers to portray such things in much greater detail. It wouldn't break continuity too much for me.