Books The Essential Guide to Warfare by Jason Fry and a pseudonymous Scotsman

X-Wing Wedge's Gamble. They still had Golan Space Stations and the like but Isard wanted the NR to take Coruscant since she had the Krytos virus ready. According to Ackbar before the battle there were 7 VSD's defending the capital. Isard dispatching the Imperator and the Emperor's Will to establish a new capital while the Triumph and Monarch were left behind to defend the planet. The other 3 go unmentioned so it is possible that they are present.

Personally I never liked this. I mean come on, only 2 of the medium strength vessels in the most powerful fleet in the galaxy defending the government capital at any point is just ridiculous and reeks of a trap. I'd like to see this tweaked to perhaps mean that there were only 2 VSD's of the original defence fleet on station while the Empire still maintained lots of ISD's and the like.

 

The fleet Ackbar brought to Coruscant included many capital ships. That relative of Needa's on the orbital mirror noted a "number" of Mon Cal cruisers pulling into line alongside the Emancipator and Liberator. The best retcon is that the two VSD's were the only ships in that area of space around Coruscant, supporting a large number of Golan Battle Stations. Maybe even take the retcon a step further and say that a NR fleet was engaged an Anaxes to hold off reinforcements from arriving at Coruscant before the world was secured.

Stackpole goes out of his way to describe the New Republic fleet at Coruscant as being very large. Even knowing that Isard wanted to lose Coruscant doesn't explain why we only see two VSD's.

--Adm. Nick

 

This needs to be adjusted given what we saw in ROTS. With the defense fleet engaging the CIS invaders outnumbering the ships from WG to such a degree that something radical needs to be introduced. Say, the NR pulled something similar to Grievous, using routes to literally bypass the local defense forces. Maybe the Imperial security around Coruscant has extended so far into the rest of the system, there's relatively few ships posted in orbit. Maybe this was part of Isard's plan, "conveniently" repositioning the fleet so there would be a visible "gap" near the planet.

 

Except some of the pictures have the flash from the DSII exploding then everyone cheering

 

not only do we need pics of the Deep Core Warlords, but names for their capital worlds...seen but never given proper names in Darksaber...although Teradoc's isn't a planet, but an asteroid orbiting a gas giant

I agree it would rock to make some of the pic/no name ships = some of the name/no pic ships

IIRC, the Sennex pirates are from Sennex in the Hapes Cluster, not Senex Sector, so I don't think Aurra's fighter = Tikiar though

 

I'm afraid we're getting away from this being an "EG to WarFARE and loose ourself in details, that belong into charakters/worlds/vessels/technology, when this book should focus on doctrines/strategies/tactics and logistics.

What are the leading commanders thinking and why?


Concerning the conquest of Coruscant in X-Wing, IIRC according to RS aside from Golan-battlestations the capital planet was protected by seven VSDs. Then in the next novel the VSDs are gone and replaced by two ISDs - talk about confusion and compare to the battle of Coruscant in ROTS and start weeping.

 

About the Whelm I prefer the ship to be destroyed in inter-imperial struggles/battles, preferably while taking down two Mandators and a score of ISDs with it. The ship would have been too prominent to simply vanish into the deep core.

 

Since the CATCW hints the ship might be from the late Republic/early Empire era, I'd hope for it to be some massive vessel of a new design, one of those "sector reach-only" ships that get a better hyperdrive later on and then lumped in with SSDs. In fact, it'd be fun to see a pic of it, leading pre-war Dreadnaughts and Carracks in the Azure sector. All red-striped and everything.

 

What exactly is CATCW saying? I always thought Whelm to be an Executor.

 

The Whelm is stated to be in the Azure Hammer Command. Later in the article, it talks about the commanding officer of the unit, Osvald Teshik, who gets booted around the Battle of Yavin. I always assumed the Whelm was present in the unit from its pre-Yavin beginning, given that this is an rpg rulebook that has adventures spanning several eras and fluff like the Whelm should be able for use even in a pre-Yavin adventure.

And I'm fairly sick of Executors by now, if you pardon me saying, they have enough appearances and numbers by now. Isn't it like 13 of them?

EDIT: Here's the full text, the book treating the Rebellion era as lasting from the end of the CW to the establishment of the New Republic:

 

Funny, for me it is the more Executors, the better - anything to get away from the minimalism of WEG, X-Wing and TTT.

Aside from that, given the importance of AZHAMCOM and Anaxes its flagship should belong to the most powerful the empire has to offer. If somebody like the Director of Intelligence or an Admiral like Drommel get their ESDN ... .

 

I wouldn't expect the Coruscant Defense Fleet in 2.5 ABY to be the same size as the one in ROTS, but I agree that something needs to be retconned to explain the New Republic's capture of Coruscant. Considering the rampant decline into warlordism and the fact that Isard wanted Coruscant to be captured, it makes sense for Coruscant to be weak.

However, two VSD's is ridiculously weak. So weak that Ackbar should of expected it to be a trap.

Given the complexity of the NR's plan, the easiest thing to assume is that the NR staged various engagements in the Core to tie-up Imperial assets. A engagement at Anaxes would help explain why Azure Hammer Command wasn't able to get reinforcements.

While I am firmly a "centrist" in the minimalist/maximalist debate, even I was bothered by the small size of the battle. Especially considering that up to that point fans assumed that the campaign to retake Coruscant was epic.

--Adm. Nick

 

Having Executors do everything is boring, which is why Giel's ship is getting a name and class, finally.

That's also my reasoning for making the Whelm something else, like a Star Battlecruiser built for extreme speed, traversing the distance between, say, Coruscant and Anaxes much faster than a Star Dreadnought like the Ex. The strategy wouldn't necessarily be solely firepower, but rapid response, something more befitting a battlecruiser than a battleship. It would get to its destination ahead of other task forces and keep an enemy busy "outrunning anything it can't outgun and outgunning anything it can't outrun".

 

To be honest, the VSDs are not all that useful in defending Coruscant. They were a token naval presence. The real defense was the number of Golan IIIs in high orbit, surface mounted anti-orbital weapons, and hideously powerful planetary shielding. The entire battle to take Coruscant depended on those shields being down, remember.

The only real use for ships in orbit would be to steer the enemy closer to the more powerful defenses. The Golan IIIs are also a major problem, as though they have fewer guns than an ISD, they are easily more powerful, not needing to ivert power to engines or hyperdrive systems, they can focus on shields and weapons. The only one the Rebels destroy is through using a solar mirror. Later we see those same Golans standing up to both a Super Star Destroyer and later Thrawn's assault on Coruscant, which included six ISDs and a number of smaller ships.

As for the survival of the VSDs, being on the defense they can divert a lot of power to shields from their guns, relying on the massive batteries of concussion missiles at first, plus the support of the Golan stations which were chewing up the small ships in the Alliance fleet.

 

The thing is, the Empire *shouldn't* have an Executor to offer at the time of the Whelm's confirmed existence. It takes a very slippery reading of the text to fudge the timelines enough to allow the Whelm to be an Executor-class ship without messing (yet again) with the class's development history.

 

There's also no need for it, given that plenty of non-Executor designs have been both mentioned and seen in various eras. (Giel's ship, the Vengeance, the Eclipse, the Sovereign, the Sarlacc Project, the Mandator, the Procurator, the Praetor, the Allegiance).

Simply because the Imperial-class exists, it didn't lead to the end of service for other Star Destroyer classes, or no further developments after it (the Aggressor, the Gladiator, the design Terpfen was working on etc.).

 

Until now I successfully managed to forget about that little piece - ignore my rantings about Stackpoles "X-Wing-ueber-alles"-space combat. Focusing the natural light of a star to destroy a battle station designed to withstand star destroyer-level firepower ... I lack the words for it.

Do we have any idea how many Golan-defence-platforms there were? IIRC, there were no more than two of the Type-III and a few of Type-II.



Concerning the Whelm being an Executor, the leadship of the class became operational 3-6 months after the events of ANH. Enough time for Teshik to get comfortable on the Whelm, being tasked to hunt for the Far Orbit (during which the GA would still be in command of AZHAMCOM) and finally getting the boot and being sent against Hapes all during year 0BBY.

Consider all the things the Big Three were up to in that time.

 

But the ship is still part of the AHC which is active from the early Empire. It makes no sense to attribute this the Executor-class when there exist alternatives that don't require changing more canon.

 

I'm kind of amused that a ship I created as a throwaway line paying homage to Jack Vance is causing so much trouble -- for me as well as you folks. (I had a fate written for the Whelm, but I'm scrapping it.)

Working on Dark Empire stuff now. The end is in sight, though there will be a fair amount of redrafting to do once the initial wright-through is complete. I'd be happier if I weren't so tired.

 

Mind telling us your original plans for her?

Nothing in the text requires Whelm to be part of Azure Hammer the entire time. She could have been added later and made flagship. I would go so far as to suggest that Whelm was one of the original four built, alongside Executor, Executor (II)/Lusankya, and Brawl/Iron Fist

Hope you get some sleep. It's no fun going without it

 

Out of curiosity, can you tell us what eras are covered? Or is that still TOP SECRET?

Also- of the eras you have written, which was the most fun/suprising?

--Adm. Nick

 

And on that note, how much leeway do you have when writing something like this? Was there a lot of work going back and forth with editors on this as well as the Atlas or was/is it pretty easy to "sell" the text itself?

 

Re eras, the book covers everything. As drafted there's a section on the Celestials/Rakata and one on the Zhell/Taung battle on ancient Coruscant, and there will be stuff on the Legacy era. So that's 30,000 years or so to cover.

I think my favorite stuff is the Pius Dea era, largely because it was uncharted terrain and so there was a chance to stretch out a little and do some new things that hopefully will tie in to existing lore in an interesting way. I also loved digging into the Academy system, discussing hyperspace routes and tactics, and a ton of other things. But really I've enjoyed all of it, some a lot more than I would have figured.

That said, I really need to read the completed first draft to see what I have and understand what the book needs. Some of that will be the usual second-stage writing/editing -- seeing where threads need to picked up and better woven backwards and forwards through the narrative, figuring out what's missing, etc. That always happens: For the ATLAS, the cultural regions (Slice, New Territories, Western Reaches, etc.) were written very late and woven back through the book, and we realized very late that we were missing a section between the Nagai/Tof invasions and the march on Coruscant. That section turned out to be one of the most fun to write.

Still, this is a challenging book -- there are tensions between writing for hardcore fans and movie fans, putting hard numbers on things and not tying future authors' hands, and writing different voices/perspectives vs. not having things feel disjointed. Those things all have to be looked at and worked on, though ultimately some of them will be realities of the project.

One thing that was very bad but I hope turns out to be good: The first half of the book turned out to be 25% longer than the word count budgeted for the whole thing! So there is already an enormous amount of cut material -- I laughed a page or so back when someone suggested WARFARE could be a series and not a single book, because I've already written at least two books' worth. I don't know what will happen to all that extra material, but I'll do everything I can to make sure it finds a home.

Re leeway: Can't answer that until after the edit is done. A lot of that depends on how successfully you execute the plan people are expecting from the outline. I will say that Del Rey and LFL are always great to work with, and even things I've grumbled about at the time have turned out to be the right calls on further reflection.