Saga Size of the Imperial Navy

I think in the other fleet thread in the literature section of the forum. The mod told us that there were 6 SSD's in the empires history in canon?

@AdmiralNick22 would have this memorized or at least written down lol.

 

13 Executor-class - an unknown number of other classes. Mandator and Mandator IV have both been mentioned - Mandator IV has been seen.

Aftermath: Life Debt gives the Executors figure:


She starts with the Dreadnoughts— the Super Star Destroyers. Thirteen were in service before the revivified Death Star was destroyed above Endor. One of those is the Ravager, the SSD from which Sloane rules the Empire (and which, strictly speaking, is now Gaelan’s command). One of those is the Executor, Vader’s command ship. The Executor was lost that day, plunging into the surface of the Death Star. Taking hundreds of thousands of the best Imperials with it.
Sloane shudders as she thinks of it.
That leaves eleven others.
Three are now in the hands of the New Republic. Two of those were from admirals willingly surrendering the ship and its people. One was taken forcibly by New Republic forces while it underwent repairs over Kuat.
Five were destroyed outright in battles across the galaxy with the New Republic— the ships were understaffed, underprotected, and on the run. (The Dreadnoughts are home to massive batteries of fleet-killing weapons, yes, but are also slow, unwieldy beasts— they hang there in the sky like bricks, and without adequate protection it is an inevitability that enemy forces could erode the ships until obliteration ensues.)
One was taken by pirates: the Annihilator. Tagge’s old ship. But who controls the Annihilator now? The reports don’t say.
Another, the Arbitrator, made a bad hyperspace calculation to escape pursuing NR ships. It evaporated when it was sucked into a gravity well.
That leaves Palpatine’s own command ship:
The Eclipse.
Records show that it, too, was destroyed by a fleet of New Republic vessels— Ackbar’s own frigate, Home One, firing the ship-killing shot.
Ah, but there’s the catch, and it’s why Sloane is here: The ships dumped data across the stars, transmitting pulses of information to this location. That provides a black-box recording of information so one could discern what exactly happened before a ship was destroyed, captured, or surrendered. All the other tracking data adds up to the known fates of each SSD. Their stories match the data for all of them— except one.
For the Eclipse, the data ends a full day-cycle before the ship was reportedly destroyed. It shows no siege by New Republic forces. It simply... drops off the star map. Gone. Vanished.
Is it possible that the Eclipse is still out there? Could the Ravager not be the last Super Star Destroyer in the naval arsenal?


And in Aftermath Empire's End, we see the Eclipse has survived.

 

I didn't see a lot of expertise in Han. "We're fine, how are you?" doesn't strike me as the response of an expert in Imperial procedure. He was winging it, IMO. No different from, "I don't know, I'm making this up as I go."

 

What about his knowledge of imperial ships dropping all their garbage before jumping to hyperspace? or his knowledge of knowing what i believe is the imperial universal signal of their transmitter not working or telling another imperial trooper to taking another elevator. And especially in the scene in ANH, there's varying contrast between Luke, who's never served in the empire, and Han, in the stormtrooper disguises, it seems he still remembers all the marching and protocol they gave to him as a cadet.

 

I was a cadet, and served another 20 years on active duty, and I didn't see Han as a convincing trooper. Whatever was drilled into him by the military didn't stick, except for a few pieces of trivia that were useful to a smuggler. As for the gesture signaling the transmitter was out, wasn't that Luke? It wasn't any kind of secret handshake, just an obvious indication that his commset was having problems.

 

I never saw Han as being overly serious about his military training and would agree that most of what he knew were ether common knowledge or what he had picked up as a smuggler.

I will sat however that one of the difficult things about this type of discussion, which I really enjoy, is how to interpret exited statements.

Could the Falcon really have been "halfway across the galaxy" in ESB after leaving the asteroid field or was it simply a offhand comment about how difficult it would be to find a small ship?

Di Han really mean 1000 ships n ANH or just shocked to see a planet blown away?

Did Leia really know that the Death Star could have launched 100 Ties to engage the Falcon or was she simply surprised that she and the others were able to escape in a battered old freighter ?

So when counting ships or troops , to me , we should take some care not to put too much weight in much of what is said in any one scene unless a very specific number is mentioned in a tactical display or other concrete form.

 

The context of my conversation with Timothy Zahn in San Marino (Italy) was my question why he identified Executor as the SSD in the Battle of Endor although the screenplay text identified it as the "Emperor's Super Star Destroyer" (which he used to arrive at the Death Star), especially since Han talked about many "command ships". His reply was that he didn't believe in such super-vessels and in their place instead there'd be many smaller vessels instead. So he felt there should be only one and Executor had been established by ESB.

I think in that scene it's clear to Piett that Vader (who's just killed Needa) is in no mood for any bullxxxx, so somehow 'sugarcoating' the fact that they lost the Falcon will do him no good whatsoever so instead he states the brutal fact. I'm pretty certain that for his own good he didn't exaggerate the negative fact but just stated what had been clear.[/QUOTE]

First he was shocked but it looks to me he recovered rather quickly and together with Kenobi tried to figure out who could have been able to do such a thing. The way it still sounds to me it's a rough estimate ("a thousand ships with more firepower than I've ever seen"), but based on firepower he's already seen (e.g. Star Destroyers).

The "100" remark was in a screenplay draft that didn't make it to Carrie Fisher's mouth. I would argue that even launching 100 TIE fighters would not have necessarily worked, because these first had to catch up with Falcon, so it was up to the nearest TIE patrol to attack Solo's ship.

 

I would agree, In the scene he's trying to contradict Obi-wan. I really believe this from Han's memory of the Imperial Starfleet that he would of been forced to memorize at the academy.

 

Information that would be a number of years out of date I might add.


Though the argument of what Han said does bore me.

 

How much do real world navies change in 9ish years? Especially during peacetime we don't commission that many new ships.

 

This is the empire.

Like most fascist regimes it likely built its economy around its military so as to spur manufacturing jobs and conscript young men into the military to keep them from causing trouble.

 

One other thought that tends to make me think the Imp navy was relatively small

With the Death Star plans missing on Tatooine it seemed as if only a few SD s were tasked with maintaining a blockade to intercept anyone who might have attempted to get the plans to the Rebels.

Given the importance of these plans why would the Tatooine system be flooded with ships if they were available ?

to me, this is further evidence to support a smaller navy.

 

If records showed that the New Republic believed they destroyed the Eclipse, does that mean that there were possibly 14 SSDs instead of 13? Aftermath says that the Eclipse data recorder stopped transmitting a full day before the supposed battle that destroyed her took place. So, did the New Republic fudge the report about destroying the Emperor's command ship? Or was there really a battle between the New Republic and a ship they believed was the SSD Eclipse?

 

Tatoonine is raltvely sparsly populated and traffic in and out will likley be small, why use more than a couple of star destroyers when 2 is more than enough to intercept traffic. The only reason Solo escaped was because of plot armor, more ISD would not of made a difference

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