Saga Size of the Imperial Navy

Yes of he was giving a officially intelligence briefing and not a comment in shock.



Cling to his statement if you must and ignore all the other Canon material.


Logic however overrides and other Canon material overrides it for me.

 

Thanks for the heads-up. Correct me if necessary, but IIRC Timothy Zahn had been the one to convert it into the "25,000 Star Destroyers" figure and popularize it.

I think that rather falls under the jurisdiction of Pablo Hidalgo, but I'm unable to follow why it could possibly be "official canon" as long as it contradicts the explicit statement of a renowned character who happened to a) serve in the Imperial Forces and b) whose profession requires him to know a thing or two about his opponent.

There is no evidence or hint in the original production materials that Lucas ever considered the Imperial Starfleet to have that many Star Destroyers, it's a conjectural and made-up figure by the same people who claimed (and illustrated) that a Super Star Destroyer would only be 5 miles (!) long.

Again (and again and again) I have no problem assuming that 25,000 Star Destroyers do exist in the GFFA, but according to Solo only a 1,000 or so are under the direct command of the Imperial Starfleet.

 

God! The nerve of these people! I can't even conceive of a Super Star Destroyer under 25 Miles long!

 

You however are avoiding the canon-ity of Luceno's Tarkin though?
Why can't we trust the opinion of a character who trained in the imperial navy for years?
Fascism, especially the galactic empire's brand of fascism would instill in it's cadets the "size and details of the imperial military" We know at least in the Republic's military clone cadets in youth would learn every detail, protocal, and probably numbers of Venator Class Star Destroyers (from the season 2 episode "Death Trap").
Why isn't it surprising that the imperial military would make it cadets learn and memorize these kinds of details about the imperial fleet? Even for propaganda purposes? I'd imagine they'd just simply memorize these facts as procedure. We even see this in ANH, aboard the Death Star, Han is an expert of imperial procedure while sneaking onboard.

I think the word of Han is very viable even in a situation of reacting in surprise. "How did they destroy a planet...???? They never had enough firepower to do it, even if they increased the fleet to 1000 ships since I've left???!!!!!" Is what I'm interpreting in the scene

 

The "Even if they increased the number of the biggest dreadnoughts to 1000 since I left" interpretation of what Han's thinking does make sense though - especially in the context of the newcanon. It allows Han's ideas to stand, but puts a slightly different spin on them.

 

This is all true, but how do you KNOW he was being completely literally in that statement? He was clearly shocked to see the destruction, he was piloting his ship through a debris field, he may not have really put a lot of thought into that comment. Anyways, I've laid out my point of view, believe what you wish.

 

Really? Given the size of the Empire, I hardly see a problem. Canon has not addressed the size of the Empire, but Legends did:

"The Galactic Empire's territory at its peak consisted of some one and a half million member and conquered worlds, as well as sixty-nine million colonies, protectorates and puppet states spread throughout the entire galaxy, stretching from the borders of the Deep Core to at least Wild Space." - The Essential Atlas.

"Unless acting in opposition to its interests, the Empire largely left loyal companies alone and even expanded the Corporate Sector to encompass 30,000 star systems." - Han Solo and the Corporate Sector Sourcebook.

The money, industry, manning, and resources to design, build, crew, and replenish 25,000 star destroyers would not have been an issue. Canon to my knowledge has not made any reference that would aim to reduce the size of the galaxy or the galactic governments established in Legends.

 

it's a galactic empire that managed to finance two death star projects in secret, 25k ISDs is like Bill Gates buying a snickers bar

 

Ah, an excellent case in point as to how words both verbal and written can be interpreted differently from how they were intended (as discussed above). While you interpreted that "Really?" as an attack on your previous post, it was actually meant as a polite "I've read and understand your post, I disagree with it and I'm going to tell you why, but please tell me more and let's discuss this".

However, I can see why you read it that way, my mistake.

 

His point is still valid, as the volume of a 160 km diameter Death Star is orders of magnitude larger than 25,000 star destroyers. Volume would be a decent way to roughly estimate materials, fabrication, maintenance, manning, training, and supply costs.

 

Both Death Stars had huge associated costs along the lines of what you're describing though. The first Death Star had a crew nearly matching the crews necessary for 120 Star Destroyers. And for a ship of that size that can't be positioned in a traditional shipyard for repairs, I imagine the cost over time would be astronomical.

 

why? though it's not economically stable to have a war time colony during peace time? The empire was not at war till Scariff? They were only dealing with small system sized rebel cells, pirates, and Separatist holdouts (only till 7 years after rots).
It's not economically stable to build up a war time economy. The size of the imperial fleet was pretty public, I'd think to the senate as well (would try to make it as small as they could without the imperial ruling council interfering). While, the Death Star project (and some other projects) were completely secret, almost to the end (of course they would use funds to build it without the senates prying eyes and use wartime spending)

 

If we take a real world analogy to look at fleet size it might go something like this -

Out of all the countries and regions in the world how many have nuclear powered aircraft carriers ? The number is really quite small.

If we look at the GFFA it is clear that even with the large number of star systems that exist, many planets are barely able to eek out a living let alone build something the size and complexity of an SD. As with Earth today, the number of true superpowers is tiny when compared to the world, or galaxy , at large. Most planets and star systems were ether part of the Republic / Empire, the separatists, the Trade federation (that really became absorbed into the separatist cause anyway) the Hutts and maybe a few others.

Most systems, even if inhabited, were simply irrelevant to the conflict at large unless they happened to be in a strategic location.

So you don't need thousands or millions of ships to create or control a power block. Large fleet actions happened , of course , but for the most part its seems logical to assume most systems were not involved in the conflicts and those that might have stuck their heads out a bit too far and been noticed would just get hammered back down with a minimum of effort.

So to me it seems like there would be no need for a ridiculously large fleet size from both a tactical and logistics stand point.

 

The Empire may not have been at war with a peer or near-peer, however it was a totalitarian dictatorship which published a military/government doctrine to rule through fear. You need a large military to control/subjugate/organize an Empire such as this on a galactic scale.

Sometimes it is economical for a government to fuel its economy through the military, see military–industrial complex. A Sith Master trying to hold an entire galactic population in his palm probably wants the workers busy, and the military strong enough to make the suggestion of resistance futile.

Think of this. Assume the first Death Star was designed, fabricated, and manned using funds that were covertly funneled from the military budget of the Empire. Which had to be the case for the Senate not to figure out what was going on. A 120 km DS1 is about 7,000,000 times the volume of an Imperial-class Star Destroyer. Just how massive would the Imperial Military and Starfleet have to be for this kind a cash to be funneled away from traditional military budget line items so that no one became suspicious? I think this is a very compelling argument.

The number is two. Two countries have nuclear powered aircraft carriers. But aren't these more analogous to the largest dreadnoughts in the GFFA?

The problem is that the Empire was controlling a good portion of the inhabited/explored galaxy. Using the example of Earth, is Earth at more or less of a peaceful state when compared to the Empire? If we look at the largest navy on Earth right now, the USN has approximate 0.1% of the United States population currently in active service.

Coruscant has a Canon population of over 1 trillion people. If Coruscant contained half of the population of the Empire, and 0.01% of Imperial citizens (an order of magnitude below the United States) are in the Imperial Starfleet, that's 200,000,000 crew members, or enough to serve on 5,000 Imperial-class Star Destroyers. My point is that even using the most minimal calculations, the Imperial Starfleet was so vast, it is hard to contemplate on a galactic scale.

 

I will throw you minimalists this bone: Canon has made numerous changes to established hyperspace physics in Legends that make it entirely more plausible for a smaller Imperial Starfleet to be everywhere at once:

-Faster travel times;
-Open communication;
-Direction changes.

But as most of my head-canon contains Legends hyperspace physics, I still can't agree with you!

There's also the type of government the Empire was (dictating a larger military) and the fact that we rarely see reinforcements come to the rescue for the Empire.

 

I still can't agree with you, but I still enjoy arguing this topic with you all. We've done it for years, in multiple threads. And everyone is stuck to their guns.
I will give you maximalists this: the old EU and more conventional space logic (at least to star wars logic) really do back you.

But, I always see the films and tv shows as the most high canon (especially with the new lucasfilm story group) and I just see the maximalist arguments contradicting everything we see in films, tv shows, and weirdly enough the new battlefront games in my opinion of course.

And personally, one last thing. I just feel the star wars galaxy is smaller than we conventionally think, in a lot of ways.

 

That's what I was saying in my op.

There is likely only a few ships in fleets like Vader and thrawn that have jurisdiction everywhere.

The rest of the imperial fleet is split into decentralised sector fleets.

The empire big. Extremly big.
The economic output of a core world like coruscant along would likely sustain a fleet.

No because I already explained that on the last thread.

*hits head on wall*

It's frustrating as it goes like this:

*such and such A says this*
Explains
*o yeah that makes sense*
*But such and such B said that*
Explains
*O yeah that's makes sense!*
*but such and such A said that!*

Repeat Ad nasuem.

 

According to my calculations based on the bridge balcony width of the large SSD conning tower model from ROJ, the actual length of an SSD would be almost 15 miles, three times the length WEG erroneously suggested.

Curiously, this (bold) is what Timothy Zahn told me at Alliancecon in 1995 why he believed that only one SSD should exist...yet propagated the 25,000 Star Destroyer figure later...

But that's what already ESB suggested. After Captain Needa had lost track of the Falcon, he went to the Executor to apologize. Right after his apology Piett informed Vader that the Falcon would "probably be on the other side of the galaxy". Unless Vader killed Needa for being too late, it appears that it's possible to cross half the galaxy within something like 30 minutes (also interesting how fast Palpatine arrived on Mustafar to take care of Vader...).

 

Dude.

 

Heir to the Empire describes the Executor as "That particular SSD was Darth Vader's personal ship". It may be that Zahn was just clarifying that there were very few, only one at Endor, and since there were few, there were none at all in Thrawn's personal fleet.

 

Yeah there was multiple SSD types in the old EU. The executor was just the latest with few made.

Even in nuCANON it's implied there are multiple types as the first over has the mandator IV which implies a 1,2 AND 3.