The Battle of Coruscant (SbS spoilers)

I have a few questions concerning the Battle of Coruscant in SxS.

I don't think in the book we get a good estimation on about the battle and how devestating it was for both sides. Denning was vague on how much firepower both sides had there. All we hear is of a large Yuzzhan Vong fleet starting at the far side of the solar system and moving in, within a few days, all the while being harassed(and i thought, prematurely, getting seriously abused) by the Jedi. It seems to me that the New Republic Fleet didn't put up much a fight. I have read a lot of opinions offering that the Yuzzhan Vong are now stretched too thin across the galaxy and that the battle for Coruscant underlies this fact and vulnerability. But at no point in the book does the New Republic think this; instead they remain convinced of the enemy's strength.

To bring up an earlier post by someone here in the EU Forum, Coruscant's shields fall relatively quick compared to the standards we have come to expect from the concept of planetary shields. Planetary shields, especially those as advanced and powerful as those manufactured to defend the capital planet, are designed to keep ships from crashing into the planet. They should easily repel the Yuzzhan Vong attacks.

My opinion asserts that Battle of Coruscant in SbS was a bit vague; how bad does the NR Fleet get whooped? How about the Yuzzhan Vong? Do the Yuzzhan Vong have any strategy besides just ramming through whatever is in their way?

This is obviously a very important event in Star Wars; what does everyone else think?

 

Troy doesn't go into too much specific detail about the battle but there is plenty you can learn if you pay attention to detail. The New Republic fleet destroyed about ten thousand Vong ships as they advanced in system. The three biggest casualty causers for the Vong were, Wedge's constant harasment, Garm's "Charge of the Light Brigade", and the mineshell detonation. The defense platforms did plenty of damage too. The best support came of course from Eclipse squadron. Kefrey and Sovv on the other hand acted like retarted Gundarks...

 

Actually, he was vague on purpose- as all of the authors have been since the star of the New Jedi Order.

No exact numbers are known, at least not yet anyway, because the planners knew there would be people like us who would keep a running count of how many cruisers analogs or star destroyers, etc. each side has.

By keeping numbers vague frees them up to pull a world ship or a super star destroyer out of their back pockets whenever they need one.

 

Again, like I said, Troy doesn't go into too much detail. I personally like it either way, but there is plenty of information if you know where to look.

 

Half the NR fleet was based at Coruscant, were put on alert with the help and backing of the Jedi, destroyed most Yammosk cruisers along with the thousands of ships, and still lost decisevly. Thats how bad. The shields fell because refugee ships pummelled it with refugee ships, and were able to open a hole wide enough to destroy the shield generators.

 

How many is 'half'?


1,000 ships or 1,000,000 ships?

 

I don't see how the Yuzzhan Vong fleet can lose 10,000 ships on the way and still win. 10,000 is not a number you mess around with folks.

 

I dunno, MWB8, Given the size of the Vong fleet and their relgiously motivated do AND die attitude, that is the kind of number they can and do mess around with. . Given the zise of their flet ("numbering in the tens of thousands" or whatever) that represents at *most*, half of their forces at the battle. 50% losses is neither inconcievable nor out of the ordinary. Especially for what they were trying to accomplish- taking out the most heavily defended planet in the galaxy by brute force.

 

The New Republic fleet numbers are not as "well defined" as the Vong. Each of the three fleet groups had several thousand vessels each. That's all we know at this point.

In all things did not go well at all for the Vong in this book. They lost...

A corvette and two assault frigates at Froz.

An assault cruiser at the first clash at Arkania.

An indeterminate number of ships during the second feint at Arkania.

An assault fleet consisting of four assault cruisers, a carrier, warship and twenty frigates plus the corvette blockade at Talflagio(sp).

A light cruiser task force at Eclipse.

A considerable number of losses in taking Borelis. One Grand Cruiser probably destroyed (islands are several miles long as are Grand Cruisers).

Over a thousand ships and their supply vessels at the Black Bantha. Total New Republic victory.

At least eleven thousand ships at Coruscant. Half fighting insystem, and a thousand crashing into the planetary sheilds. Thats not counting all those destroyed by fighters, Garm charge, defense platforms ect... By several accounts almost all of the Coruscant system is clogged with derelict ships and flotsam.

All of this "confirmed", there are multiple references to most of these losses.

Keep this up and there aren't going to be any Vong left alive at the end of this serries.

P.S. almost forgot! Four corvettes and another assault cruiser were destroyed by the Jedi at Mykr.

 

Seemed like the Jedi Wing did a good amount of damage. But then they seemed to be under Wedge's command during the battle. Too bad more commanding officers didn't act like Wedge and Bel Iblis. And does Bel Iblis's actions during the battle remind anyone else right now of a certain Civil War Union General?

 

Was it Sherman?

 

I'm going to say Grant. I'm not a Civil war history buff. But as my American History teacher put it, "Grant was a the kind of guy who'd unbutton his collar, slug down a pint of whiskey and throw 10,000 troops at an enemy line. If they all got killed then hell! He'd just down another bottle of the good stuff and throw another 20,000 at them!"

Ah... I miss Mr. Stamp.

 

The image of Grant as a drunken general has come under question in recent years. He did have a drinking problem, one well remembered from when he first served as an officer in the army. And that image appears to be the one the politicians who wanted to remove him went for, though apparently memoris from staff officers would suggest that Grant tended to steer clear of alchol in most cases so as to keep a fairly clear head.

But it was Grant I had in mind. Lincoln's comment (which in PM to a certain someone who asked which general I meant ended up being misquoted) when pushed to get rid of Grant was "I can't spare this man, he fights." And Bel Iblis charging in to get at the Vong through the refugee ships just reminded me of that comment. Plus, if I recall correctly, several folks wanted to remove Bel Iblis from command during the battle because of his actions.

 

His actions, i think, were well within bounds. The refugee ships the Vong were using as cover were on suicide missons to coruscants shield anyway. PLus, IF the NR fleet tried to take out everyone with ion cannons, their inertia would still smack them into the shield, and its doubtful that the NR could ahve picked up everyship and still fought the VOng. Shooting throught the refugee screen was the only option, aside from retreat completely.Plus the VOng lost many ships not expecting that manuever.

 

I don't have my SbS on me, but from memory:

there were approx 10,000 Vong ships at the battle. No mention of grand cruisers, but there were plenty of destroyers and carriers and tons of cruisers.

The NR force was divided into 4 taskforces i think. Wedge, Sovv, Iblis and Traest. I agree that each taskforce probably constituted around a thousand ships.

Now, consider that the Empire had 20,000 desatroyers at its peak, and these were mid-to high level class ships. The Imperial fleet was probably in the order of 100,000 starships at least.

Given that the Vong are an invading force low on ship resources, and the NR fleet was concentrated on defending all the core world (remember the ring of starships around the Corellian system) it seems obvious that this was a battle incporating significant percentages of the military assets of the entire galaxy, but which the NR can weather far better than the vong.

what was the point of that? i don't know!

 

Right, forgot Sovv. He was a idiot too. The reason I put about 20,000 ships was because the phrase uses is plural, "Tens of thousands" not, "Ten thousand". So it's a rough guess.

 

Yes, Sovv seems a bit incompetent, doesn't he ? ? ?

 

Is Sunolok a Grand Cruiser? Because it was there and got destroyed, and was Lah's flagship. Hmmm...

 

Nope, in the book it's refered to as a destroyer analog. In other books it was called a warship analog. So they're probably the same class of ship. The only Grand we've seen so far was at Ithor. Acording to some new WotC information, Grands are pretty rare in the Vong fleet.

It is rather nice that the Jedi destroyed Tsavong Lah's personal command ship though.

 

." But at no point in the book does the New Republic think this; instead they remain convinced of the enemy's strength. "

Rebirth talks about this. The Vong remark on how their fleet is stretched to thin and the enemy has no idea how thin.

 

Yeah the Republic guys apparently have no idea how thin they are strung.

But does that mean this is going to be the reason for eventual victory?

I think maybe that the new Rebellion will be much more successful without having to defend anything, well anything large like Coruscant. They'll strike like the Rebels used to do back in the day. Ahhh the old school. Nice to be back.

 

Yeah, because the Battle of Sernpidal was successful since the Vong didn't have the resources to call in backup at their primary shipyard. Battleplan Coruscant was pretty much a blitz, IMO, since it was done in succession so that the NR had no way to counterattack.

 

to whoever commented on the amount of Imperial ships... here is a more accurate report...


"One of the first RPG-books states, that an average sectorfleet has three to five dozen Stardestroyers as backbone.

For the 1,026 Sectors mentioned in the TPM-Sourcebook, this makes a maximum number of 61,560 ISDs. Depending on the size of the empire at the time of RotJ (alone 250 sectors more in the Unknown Regions), there would be more.

From the "TM of the DeathStar" we know, that the sectorfleets were only used for coastgarding and that they aren´t supposed to leave the territory they patrol. Because of this, they can´t be used for expansionistic actions (like the conquest of new worlds).

The lowest number of Stardestroyers ever mentioned is 25,000, but it is possible that those are only the ships, the empire uses to increase its territory. If every bigger ship (like Executor) is escorted by five of them, we get a total number of 5,000 ships bigger than an ISD (Allegiance-Class-ships and Interdictordestroyers have probabely no escorts).
Also note, that smaller ships than Executor probabely have less than five ISDs as escorts (two for ships till a lenght of eight kilometers and three for ships longer than eight kilometers (Vengeance, Executor, Eclipse).
If numbers of bigger ships are equally divided, we get 5,000 ships with 2 ISDs each and 5,000 ships with 3 ISDs each. If numbers of bigger ships aren´t equally divided, we get every possible combination of them.
If we assume, that every major world has similiar defences as Coruscant in the X-Wing-series, we get an additional number of 2,000,000 ISDs (one million major worlds and fifty million protectorates, colonies and local governments (Imperial Sourcebook).

Lets assume the size of the empire during RotJ equals 1,500 sectors. This makes:
90,000 SDs in sectorfleets,
2,000,000 SDs in planetary defenseforces
25,000 SDs in the imperial Navy or expansion force (without Allegiance or Interdictordestryers)
and a minumum number of 5,000 ships of bigger size.

All in all 2,310,000 Stardestroyers.

Sounds huge, but remember, that the empire was able to buildt 60% of the second DeathStar in less than a year. If finished its volume would have equaled 4,2 BILLION ISDs, despite being built in a secret backwatersystem of the outer rim.

Please don´t ask me for numbers of the smaller vessels."

Now im just wondering why the authors in the NJO don't have the major battles from all view points. Take the Battle of Nar Shadda in The Hutt Gambit. It went to the bridge in several of the vessels. It gave names of most all of the larger ships. The Battle of Endor was in several viewpoints as well. Why don't the authors give ship names, and lots of viewpoints during the Battle of Coruscant??? It was most likely one of the BIGGEST battles of all time , yet so little detail is revealed... WHY???

 

But it said 20k sds in VOTF or SOTP. So I will go with those stats, but yours are interesting.

 

I think SbS's numbers sound about right for what there should actually be.However troy went against the current flow of info when he made those numbers.As I said before the military writing in Sbs was abysmal.The small moon size plasma ball is proof enough.
In the BFC the Republic had 5 fleets with about 200 ships each.In SbS Jacen makes a plan to the council about using 3ISDs for a surprise attack but they can't seem to ring up 3 ISds while Sovv calls up 900 ships easy for Black Bantha.It doesn't track.10,000 ships is also a LOT.Unless skips are counted as ships a loss of that magnitude should be the end of the Vong.Again it's just bad militray writing.Coruscant's defense fleet was also not supposed to be that big.If they had thousands of ships to call upon and the Vong normally accosted each world with maybe a dozen,why could they send reinforcements to the front out of their thousands.
Like I said,it doesn't track.
West End is to blame for those SD numbers.Like having a millionn people on the DS.Please.If the DS had a million people,they'd never know each other existed.That thing had to have like 10,000 decks and each would be dozens of km across.Plus as was said,the DS outmassed the entire fleet by plenty if there were only 25K.