The needed: The Military Blunders, Inaccuracies, and "That's Impossible! Even for a computer" thread

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I don't think he was planning on indoor combat. And that still doesn't explain the other sources. The sandtroopers weren't wearing camo in ANH. Hoth and Bespin were perfect combat situations for a stormtrooper. And all the EU situations. To the Last Man is a perfect example.

 

Yeah, I think it's just a general overconfidence thing. A "Why do we need to blend in when we'll cut these fools down in five minutes flat?" attitude. Also, in the movies there are very few actual combat deployments -- only white Hoth, actually. All the others are some sort of garrison or patrol. The EU, of course, is different.

 

I agree that they are overconfident. But still any military commander worth his salt knows the value of camo and my main issue on this is that they went from stupid (AotC) to intelligent (RotS) to stupid again (post-RotS).

 

Yeah, a lot of stuff you just have to accept.

 

more serious problem is the constant belitting of the Empire TIE force. that's nominally chalked up to Rebel propganda, as we saw how Darth Vader TIE force chalked up numberous kills against a larger X-wing and Y-wing force.

According to the Death Star Technical Companion, the Death Star only launched a single TIE Fighter squadron against the forces at Endor (which is another example of GROSS STUPIDITY on the part of the so-called military genius Grand Moff Tarkin). The second squadron was Darth Vader's personal hand-picked squadron of elite starfighter pilots, which is born up by the movie, and seems to be why they were able to shoot so many ships down.

I do admit, the scorn that Wedge Antilles and his fellow pilots heap upon TIE fighters though is unwarranted as even the "base" TIE Fighter eats through Z-95 headhunters with ease and seems about a match for a Y-Wing in open space according to the TIE FIGHTER video-game. The speed and manueverability advantages they possess actually seem like a fairly even trade off against shields in many respects since we see how much good 'shields' do against direct hit energy fire in Star Wars: ANH (not a whole lot).

I do object to one issue of Empire though where Wedge Antilles flies a antiquated Jedi Starfighter and somehow beats a horde of TIEs behind him. I don't care how skilled you are, the strength of your equipment DOES matter...(this is another blue but less grevious, pun intended, than others).

 

I do object to one issue of Empire though where Wedge Antilles flies a antiquated Jedi Starfighter and somehow beats a horde of TIEs behind him. I don't care how skilled you are, the strength of your equipment DOES matter...(this is another blue but less grevious, pun intended, than others).

Two things- one, Wedge Antilles is one of the best non-Jedi pilots to ever take the controls of a starfighter. Two- a Jedi starfighter is fast, maneuverable, and has shields.

 

Charlemange- "According to the Death Star Technical Companion, the Death Star only launched a single TIE Fighter squadron against the forces at Endor (which is another example of GROSS STUPIDITY on the part of the so-called military genius Grand Moff Tarkin)."

Odd, in the movie I always thought it was Lord Vader that ordered fighter to launch. I always assumed that Tarkin believed the fighters to be no threat and was content to ignore them.

"I do object to one issue of Empire though where Wedge Antilles flies a antiquated Jedi Starfighter and somehow beats a horde of TIEs behind him."

I'd say it's best to put that in the grey area of canon. "Gather children and listen to the legend of Wedge Antilles and how he found a functional Jedi Starfighter to fight the Empire with." Kinda like that.

 

Here's one I'm only touching with a ten foot pole....

Name of the Problem: The infamous Clone Numbers problem.

Description of the Problem: I think EVERYONE on the board knows this problem at this point. 1 million clones available with another 2 million almost done.

Rating of the Problem: If you believe it was the clones available at the start of the war or If you believe it was 3 million clones for the entirety of the war

Any Fix, if possible, you suggest: I think everything possible has been said on this issue and it's included for completeness' sake.

Canon sources where this problem is continued: SWI: Grand Army, Shatterpoint, Battle of Kamino

***

Name of the Problem: The Imperial Garrison System

Description of the Problem: The Empire was a force that wished to dominate the whole of the galaxy with it's military force and according to the Imperial Sourcebook, this was handled primarily through the use of Imperial garrisons that were based loosely on Roman Legion fortresses. Darth Vader indicates that he might leave a garrison on Cloud City. Bakura has an Imperial garrison that's clearly a direct rip from the Imperial Sourcebook as it even describes the appearence of it as depicted by the sourcebook.

Here's the problem.....a Imperial garrison only contains 2000 personnnel including pilots, stormtroopers, and officers.

Rating of the Problem: How much can 2000 do? or Garrisons need to be a lot bigger

Any Fix, if possible, you suggest: I've long suspected that the Empire was not as large as people suspected it to be. The importance of the Imperial fleet is something that seems to bear this up as Darth Vader and company are constantly moving from planet to planet in order to put out fires of various sorts. TIE Fighter showed TIEs going to put out wars that had broken out on various worlds within the context of the Empire, Empire the comic book shows Darth Vader routinely dealing with uprisings.

One of my largest suspicions is that the Empire simply doesn't possess enough troops, especially with the "ban" on cloning (even if it's not worth the paper it's printed on), to effectively police the entire galaxy. The fact that the Imperial racial agenda restricts their forces to LARGELY only male, human, and mostly Core World humans is something that drastically causes a drain on their military system.

The Tarkin Doctrine takes on an interesting new meaning with the rule through "fear of force" rather than force (or in the Emperor's case "Force") as it indicates that the Empire built weapons like the Death Star and inflicted many of it's atrocities because it didn't have enough personnel to adequately subjugate the majority of worlds and had to rely on local forces for law enforcement and the like. Garrisons were a token military presence that could be used by governors on largely pacified planets like Bakura to bomb isolated incidents or call for reinforcements as their armored fortress would be able to withstand assault until they arrived...

But mostly exist solely for geo-politics.

Canon sources where this problem is continued: Imperial sourcebook, TIE Fighter, Star Wars Sourcebook, Truce at Bakura, Empire

 

The quality of TIEs depends massively on the quality of pilots and fighter ops controllers; even if we haven't got the full story, it seems a fair guess that Black Eight are the best TIE unit in the Empire at that point, and in XWRS #22, some of the Rogues find it hard to believe that Fel can have been a combat pilot in TIEs for six full years...

The average TIE pilot probably doesn't actually have the skill to utilize the superior speed and manoeuvrability of the spaceframe properly - he's just a guy in armour.

On Imperial Garrisons: the ISB also says that garrisons are designed as a kernel that can ramp up overnight to a full corps of 300,000 Imperial troops. They consist of a Corps HQ and a sufficient force to provide a visible presence, deal with low-level threats, and hold a landing-zone if required...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

>>>I do object to one issue of Empire though where Wedge Antilles flies a antiquated Jedi Starfighter and somehow beats a horde of TIEs behind him. I don't care how skilled you are, the strength of your equipment DOES matter...(this is another blue but less grevious, pun intended, than others). <<<

Depending on when that dogfight is set, he may have already had experience in the Jedi Starfighter, considering that he used one (with seismic charges... ) over Geonosis in Rebel Strike.

 

i loved that level.
but how can an e-web cannon destroy an LAAT/i gunship?

 

Also note (on the topic of starfighter stuff) that according to X-wing, it's standard Imperial doctine not to engage unless they have at least three-to-one numerical superiority in the fighter arena. Do they deserve the scorn the Rogues give them? Not any more than the original X-wing flown by an average pilot. The Rogues would decimate almost any fighter group in the galaxy with equal strength in numbers and anything save maybe TIE/Defenders. Shields do provide some help. ANH is IMO not the best visual indicator of this. Perhaps the shields were already damaged or something, but their "deflector screens" might as well have been nonexistent... interestingly, though we note that the turbolasers in the trench, despite their nearly constant firing, never destroy an X-wing. This could perhaps be explained as being a comination of decent flying with the fact that they had their deflectors set full front for much of the time, which is enough to deflect a glancing blow. Though why they'd be so easily destroyed by mere ties is still beyond me...

- Keralys

 

I think the answer to the gunship problem is a Red problem and related to this one.

Name of the Problem: Kir Kanos takes out a TIE fighter with a blaster pistol.

Description of the Problem:

Kir Kanos is an individual whom probably is the most literally suited for video game play characters in the history of Star Wars. He doesn't talk much, doesn't emote, doesn't have much in the way of background and seems to exist for the purposes of killing extraordinarily large numbers of individuals. Honestly, if there was a crossover, I keep thinking Kir Kanos would simply put on a new suit of armor and start calling himself the "Master Chief."

One of his most iconic moments of battle (others include single handidly blowing up a Star Destroyer and the fight with Canor Jax over the Squall) is the fact that Kir Kanos defeated a large portion of the Imperial army himself with the use of a blaster pistol to take out a speeding TIE coming at him's pilot. The problem is, you rather expect TIE fighter "transpasteel" to be able to withstand a blaster pistol. There's always been a fairly huge descrepency between blasters and starfighter guns just like a helicopter chain gun is different than a machine gun.

Even in the Phantom Menace, starfighter guns easily destroy droid dekkars that could absorb energy blasts.

Rating of the Problem Needs a retcon

This problem just needs a bit of tweaking to be fixed.

Any Fix, if possible, you suggest:

Kir Kanos' history is somewhat of a cipher to begin with. There have been plenty of theories about him from the unlikely (he's a clone of Kyle Katarrn) to the quasi-cannon (The Imperial Royal Guard is made of clones who don't know they're clones). The current stats for Imperial Royal Guardsmen all give them minor force abilities that correspond to some Jedi training, probably solely in terms of their combat abilities, so how Kir Kanos is able to wade through most of the enemy isn't really in debate largely.

The only retcon really needed is one that's already implied in the storyline that Kir Kanos is a master of battle engineering. He already rigged his scimitar bomber into exploding enough playload to destroy an ISD. In this case, we can presume that he was able to somehow jury-rig the blaster in his possession to fire a full payload of tibanna gas (25 shots i believe is how much they normally have) into a single blast that took the pilot out. Airan Cracken indicated that such "fixes" are not impossible in his field guide.

Canon sources where this problem is continued: Crimson Empire, Cracken's Field Guide.

 

Shields do provide some help. ANH is IMO not the best visual indicator of this. Perhaps the shields were already damaged or something, but their "deflector screens" might as well have been nonexistent...

Though RPG rules don't have the same "oomph" they used to, the video games tend to back this up. TIE Fighters don't possess shields themselves but they have extraordinarily powerful guns on them. Equal to a direct hit by all 4 quad-lasers of a X-wing hitting at once. TIE Fighters in a New Hope scored direct hits at point blank range largely, which is what they are meant to do.

Shields are meant to serve against glancing blows (Luke was hit with one).

interestingly, though we note that the turbolasers in the trench, despite their nearly constant firing, never destroy an X-wing. This could perhaps be explained as being a comination of decent flying with the fact that they had their deflectors set full front for much of the time, which is enough to deflect a glancing blow. Though why they'd be so easily destroyed by mere ties is still beyond me...

Turbolasers are meant to be heavy bombardment weapons and not precision ones. I do believe they do shoot down one one of the X-wings though. At least I distinctly remember a gun firing and a sparking explosion of one.

 

Sounds good, particularly as we know that Cracken taught pretty much everybody he knew (including Luke) the whole "little itty bitty power-pack makes big boom if wired right) trick - see Specter of the Past. If he could do that, then an expert like Kanos might easily be able to hotwire it. And that much power would probably be the equivalent of a much, much more powerful shot that could take down a TIE.

Course, there's still the issue of taking out a LAAT/i with an E-web... I'd suggest that it probably did something sneaky like peg a known weakness. We know (from Shatterpoint) that they're fairly vulnerable under the right conditions. The engines in particular - or rather, the turbines - look to be particularly vulnerable. So if you're a good enough shot to slag those, or even get a good chunk of debris in one of them, well, it'd royally screw up the rest of the ship.

When did that happen, btw? I don't remember it...

Edited to respond and not double post...

Turbolasers are meant to be heavy bombardment weapons and not precision ones. I do believe they do shoot down one one of the X-wings though. At least I distinctly remember a gun firing and a sparking explosion of one.

Hmm. I just watched it the other day, and I don't remember that, but I could well be wrong. *shrugs* Even with the low degree of precision, there wasn't that much room to maneuver down the trench. You'd think they'd have just flooded it with fire and watched them blow up. I like the idea that they had a lot of fire just bounce off shields because the fire was coming in at a glancing angle relative to the X-wing's profile, which is pretty narrow from the front (the direction from which the shots are coming).

- Keralys

 

Hmm. I just watched it the other day, and I don't remember that, but I could well be wrong. *shrugs* Even with the low degree of precision, there wasn't that much room to maneuver down the trench. You'd think they'd have just flooded it with fire and watched them blow up. I like the idea that they had a lot of fire just bounce off shields because the fire was coming in at a glancing angle relative to the X-wing's profile, which is pretty narrow from the front (the direction from which the shots are coming).

Well then it wouldn't be much of a movie then. This is a standard bold explanation that the Death Star Technical commentaries covered actually. It strains credulity but again, the Imperial military seems to be composed of complete morons at every turn.

In this case, Tarkin was so dismissive of a small scale threat it was only under duress that he allowed turbolasers to be inserted at all. They were more or less positioned randomly and grafted onto the surface of the Death Star without much thought.

Suffice to say, a single turbolaser blast would atomise a X-wing as EU portrays it though.

(Of course, WEG did make some mistakes that got larger. Concussion missles for example are MORE powerful than proton torpedoes according to the novelization of Return of the Jedi and that's why the Falcon could destroy the Death Star reactor unlike Wedge's proton torpedoes. However in the video games and RPG, they are less powerful)

I like your E-web explanation, my suggestion was merely that they might have modified it...perhaps with no regards to the weapon "burning out" with powerful fire.

 

The E-web blowing up a gunship occured in Rogue Squadron III: rebel Strike.
You don't hit it anywhere special, you just hammer away like nuts until it get's destroyed.

 

Well they were designed to be helicopters rather than starship equivalents.

 

i know, but an E-web?

 

I think we can file that on the way of stuff that's just gamer's license.

For example...

Seriously, an X-wing...takes out an ISD...in straight combat.

Name of the Problem: The fact that in Rebel Assault that you blow up a STAR DESTROYER

Description of the Problem: Over Tatooine you and your squadron are assigned to destroy a Star Destroyer.

Rating of the Problem: The fact that in Rebel Assault that you blow up a STAR DESTROYER

Any Fix, if possible, you suggest: I dunno...partisans disable the shield. The Proton Torpedoes were experimental weapons loaded with anti-matter. I have no honest idea.

Canon sources where this problem is continued: Just Rebel Assault.

 

Important to note that it wasn't destroyed, per se. One of its engines was disabled and it crash-landed out of sight.

 

>>>Course, there's still the issue of taking out a LAAT/i with an E-web... I'd suggest that it probably did something sneaky like peg a known weakness. We know (from Shatterpoint) that they're fairly vulnerable under the right conditions. The engines in particular - or rather, the turbines - look to be particularly vulnerable. So if you're a good enough shot to slag those, or even get a good chunk of debris in one of them, well, it'd royally screw up the rest of the ship.

When did that happen, btw? I don't remember it...<<<

Wedge vs. LAAT/i on Geonosis happened in Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike for GameCube. Wedge crashes on Geonosis and must fend of Stormies, leftover battledroids, and a traitor (IIRC) in the gunship. I would say that it could be destroyed because of A) afforementioned weaknesses, B) the gunship may have been already damaged, C) the gunship was ~25 years old, and the E-web was new, or D) E-webs are powerful (remember the E-web targeting the Falcon in ESB.) I would say its a combination of all the above.

---

I've got a continuity problem, but I can't remember the details and don't have the X-wing CD with me. In one of the historical levels in X-wing (CD, I'm not sure which expansion otherwise), parts of the briefing mention a General Madine. Obviously, this refers Crix Madine, but at the time (circa Battle of Yavin) Madine was still an Imp. Can anyone look this up? Thanks.

:)

 

The guy in the gunship is a traitor. It's Sarkli, who looks and talks like a clone trooepr.

 

I've got a continuity problem, but I can't remember the details and don't have the X-wing CD with me. In one of the historical levels in X-wing (CD, I'm not sure which expansion otherwise), parts of the briefing mention a General Madine. Obviously, this refers Crix Madine, but at the time (circa Battle of Yavin) Madine was still an Imp. Can anyone look this up? Thanks.

Things like this don't bug me too much, it's a screwup.

Tiny patches...

1. Maybe some guy has the same last name.

2. It's one of Madine's infilitration missions for the Storm Commandoes

(which would make a VERY interesting story)