United Federation of Planets(ST) vs Galactic Empire(SW)

[Hiver]

Ge win over UFP simply to having much more ships. given even remotely equal level in technology GE win because they got MUCH more ships.
UFP got what...400 ships?(thats what they pulled togeather for the battle at wolf anyway) and GE got how many thousands?

Unless of course the lasers of GE is as effective as that other race that used lasers on the enterprise

[legionare]

your lack of knowledge and shortsightedness disturbs me...

[evilauthor]

Originally Posted by legionare

your lack of knowledge and shortsightedness disturbs me...

His lack of actually reading this thread that he's commenting in is equally disturbing... or maybe proof of sanity since he obviously had better things to do.

Yeah, yeah, the GE has lots of ships, but the debate for the last few pages centered on how many such ships the Empire can actually commit to offensive operations against the Federation without committing political suicide.

[General Schatten]

Originally Posted by Hiver

Unless of course the lasers of GE is as effective as that other race that used lasers on the enterprise

Watch the episode again, those lasers were only ~60MW, considering a Federation ship can take a photorp and not explode, it's no surprise they wouldn't scratch it.

In other words, it's not a matter of it being a laser, the problem is the energy output of the laser is too low.

[Mith]

EDIT: another example of why sequential NCC-numbers is bullshit - USS Valiant and USS Defiant. Defiant is NX-74205, Valiant is NCC-74210. A difference of only 5. And yet Valiant was launched in 2372, a full two years prior to Defiant (2370). It speaks for itself.

Might I have you tell me just where you got that information? Because Memory Alpha cites Valiant as the source of that information. Yet going through the script for it and plugging it into my Words Document (using the find option) I can't find it. I would ask that you find the evidence that supports your claim.

EDIT: As a side note, it's posible that due to the rather complicated power issues the Defiant held, the Valiant was kept in stardock for a few more years trying to fix the problems. Although we know that Sisko solved his issues for the Defiant, part of those were from O'Brien performing with just one modification, 25 Starfleet violations. Hard to believe that Starfleet would approve of such methods, so it's likely they were trying to stick to the letter and were getting burned for it.

[Mith]

Originally Posted by Mr. Oragahn

One way to solve this is to argue that the small ships were not useful for battles. There's a wide variety of military ships you would not expect to see on the front line, largely because they're not suited for combat.

More likely due to the fact that the Defiant class was new and it would take longer building that than upgrading the rest of the fleet that needed it badly.

Are those ships generally retrofitted though? Not to say that the UFP could be building a given class of ship over a couple decades, but would bring modifications to the design over the years until the whole model would be considered just too old.
Going just by the overall aspect of the ship from external shots is not sufficient.
Besides, didn't Mith point out the existence of a multitude of other armed classes?

Apart from dedicated science and medical ships, every Starfleet ship is armed and capable of combat. The only ship not seen to fill such a role, despite its combat capability, would be the Intrepid class, which was a long range scout if I recall correctly.

There could be small science vessels as well. Hell, even some shuttles apparently had a RN.
Theory: Perhaps that shuttle did get a RN because it was warp capable? Not all shuttles are capable of warp travel.

No. Only runabouts had a registry number. Shuttles were given the registry number of their mother ship (ie, all Enterprise shuttles had a registry of 1701). It's unknown about fighters, but we've never seen them have a registry number.

[Lord Vespasian]

Originally Posted by Mr. Oragahn

We have the equivalent of more than an entire page of two persons arguing for and against the ICS firepower, Mith and GS, and you siding with GS when Mith brings up the DoaD cover incident.

I'll say again: Or perhaps you should have actually responded to what I was saying, and not to some fantasy that exists solely in your head?

Obviously your memory of it is rather poor, otherwise you would have not insisted that a ship couldn't be fast enough to fire its guns one second after coming out of hyperspace.
If this were a trap by Anakin's forces, it would also mean that whatever ship he'd use to fall on Grievous' back would be ready to fire the moment they get out of hyperspace.

Those are assumptions. We're dealing with different circumstances, different ships, and different crews on a fundamental level.

They're not surrounded. They have two Venators in front of them, they were coming out of the asteroid field anyway. You have to notice that just by reestablishing shields on the stern, with a mere trillonth or quadrillionth of the overall shield draining rate they're capable of by ICS standards, the Munificents would have been safe from the AT-TE firepower.

They also have to take into account Republic fighters.

That, and the fact that they didn't even move such a low fraction of their shielding ability to their stern as soon as they were being shot at proves that they would have not done it either if they had been shot at by a warship.

Grievous had already lost half his ships at that point and decided upon retreating, though. The battle was essentially over when Anakin sprung the trap.

Funny enough, given that not only the Venators, but Anakin's starfighter too, can seemingly knock out those Munificents in one go, who knows, maybe the droids overcompensated.

That because the Munificents were not moving anywhere.
You'd notice that with those thousands of gees of propulsion given by the ICS, the Munificents would have easily moved away from the asteroid belt as well.

Likely being pursued by Republic forces and forced to retreat at an angle Grievous was explicitely against approaching from in the first place.

And also notice that the very fact that Grievous expected to gain something tangible from the asteroid belt instead of attacking the Venators from above also proves that the ICS is wrong on the firepower issue. Otherwise Grievous would have not been fool enough to expect anything from those couple rocks which the Venators would have easily cleared away.

Some cover is still better than none. Regardless of the firepower, they're not going to just punch through the asteroids like, surprise surprise, a "cannonball through glass."

That, even we both know that you think generals on both sides were stupid.

Keep up that delusional thinking.

An intelligent officer with ships capable of thousands of gees of acceleration would have known rather easily what to do from that.

Dealt with above.

Anakin knew that Grievous would try to play it smart.

What you fail to grasp, or are just trying to avoid, is the fact that the asteroids are merely incidental to Grievous' reasoning. He says so himself, he's going through the asteroids because attacking from above (and implicitely from below, as well) puts him at a disadvantage. The asteroids are only said to provide cover for the unshielded aft quarter.

Venators can point their heavier guns upwards, or could approach the asteroid belt on an oblique trajectory.

Except then they're not attacking from behind, are they?

As for the gravity well, if this was such a problem, then Grievous would know that they'd have plenty of time to switch a portion of their shields back on their aft

Exactly. Hence why he screamed "Impossible!" when he was outflanked. He expected to have more time, time the asteroids provide in the form of cover.

These were small asteroids. And no, the data provided on Young's page (hosted at Wong's site) is wrong, because it's obtained from calculations hinging on inflated measurements. This is not a secret anymore btw, it's been pointed out a good many times in many threads for more than two years.

I don't care about that. Vaporized, shattered, teleported into happy land, it doesn't matter. The asteroids ceased to be an obstacle. The asteroid field would be cleared away in no time.

Yes, and the conventional firepower of the Slave-I rates in megajoules. The seismic mines are not conventional. It's like pretending me and my scooter we're more powerful than a tank or a battleship because I'd happen to carry a suitcase nuke.

That's a horrible analogy. A better one would be, if some poor schmuck like you can get his hands on a nuke, odds are the military isn't going to be too hard up for them. Nah, that's still awful, since nukes are actually hard to come by.

And that's an universe where snubfighters take down ISDs anyway.

Yeah, Grievous is really up shit creek, facing three Republic carriers with half his fleet already torn to shreds, isn't he?

What is there to decipher about the reaction of a Grievous that's so pissed off his nice plan didn't work properly?

Oh, so now Grievous is suddenly unreliable?

It still doesn't undermine that he considered that the could be attacked from behind while having shields down

At the moment, I'm puzzling over how the hell you managed to think that it was supposed to undermine that fact.

and thought the asteroids would protect him

Refer directly above.

and it doesn't undermine the fact that he clearly considered the asteroid cover would let him win this battle.

Nah, see, that's some bullshit right there. The asteroids serve only to protect the unshielded aft quarter, anything else is mere speculation.

Nor does it undermine that the droids were clearly concerned about going through the field, and didn't really like the sound of the asteroid hitting the ship, to what Grievous had them double shields front.

Yeah? And? Was there a point in there anywhere?

You do know how arguments work, don't you? You actually have to, you know, argue something.

But anyway, considering that we won't agree, and from your behaviour in this thread lately, I think it's just better you move away, since you obviously don't care about people's opinions but still reply to said opinions.

Oh fuck off already. Your argument is little more than "You're wrong because I think so!" and crying over the fact that your entirely unsolicited opinion is just that.

[legionare]

Originally Posted by evilauthor

His lack of actually reading this thread that he's commenting in is equally disturbing... or maybe proof of sanity since he obviously had better things to do.

Yeah, yeah, the GE has lots of ships, but the debate for the last few pages centered on how many such ships the Empire can actually commit to offensive operations against the Federation without committing political suicide.

I'm expecting him to say, 1 at sufficient velocity or some crap like that

[Leo1]

Originally Posted by Mr. Oragahn

One way to solve this is to argue that the small ships were not useful for battles. There's a wide variety of military ships you would not expect to see on the front line, largely because they're not suited for combat.

There could be small science vessels as well. Hell, even some shuttles apparently had a RN.
Theory: Perhaps that shuttle did get a RN because it was warp capable? Not all shuttles are capable of warp travel.

Well there is the fact that even the diminutive Danube-class Runabaouts (glorified long range buses) have individual NCC numbers, as does Data's one-man scout ship in Insurrection. Other ships that wouldn't see any use in battles are the Oberth-class and Nova-class science vessels (the latter stated explicitly in VOY "Equinox" to be intended for 'short term' planetary research operations, with 'minimal weapons' and a top speed of only Warp 8) and Olympic-class medical/science ships. None of them were ever observed in Dominion War fleets.

In terms of the Oberth-class, ships with the "SS" prefix (instead of USS - i.e. civilian ships) apparently had NCC- numbers as well - the Tchaikovsky was the ship IIRC (some TNG episode)

Are those ships generally retrofitted though? Not to say that the UFP could be building a given class of ship over a couple decades, but would bring modifications to the design over the years until the whole model would be considered just too old.
Going just by the overall aspect of the ship from external shots is not sufficient.
Besides, didn't Mith point out the existence of a multitude of other armed classes?

Well one would assume they've been upgraded, yeah, but that doesn't make them as good or better than a new ship.

Yes, the differences are in the thousands some times, but why is it impossible that many small ships were built?
Sure, it's not going to make a large warfleet, but that's not really what I'm looking for here.

The problem arises when you consider the issues in the context of how many ships the UFP supposedly built up to the 2370s if the sequential NCC idea is accurate. The NCC numbers only went up in the TNG era to the ~75,000 mark. What, prior to the TNG era they were building jack all starships and then all of a sudden it shoots up so the built almost 10% worth of every ship they built in history up to that point in the space of only four years?

Also the DS9 writers were working from the premise that the UFP had around 30K combat capable ships, right?

I have no idea. Given what we saw in the Dominion War, I find 30,000 combat ships highly dubious. As I noted before, it'd mean the Federation lost about 20,000 ships in a few years of war - the combined Dominion/Cardassian and Breen fleet was (IIRC 2375) 30,000 ships, and the Klingons/Romulans/UFP would have to be at least close to that number to stand a chance (making allowances for the fact that the majority of Dominion/Cardassian/Breen ships are individually smaller and weaker).

This would clearly hurt the sequential registration number theory. That said, like for anything in TV shows, there are outliers that don't stick to the averages. Same for firepower for example. Or FTL speeds, etc.
It is not logical to suddenly be ultra conservative against a given theory when every body is rather lax regarding any other subject of contention.

Yeah, it's one inconsistency, but there are others as well. At the end of the day the fact remains there's no evidence the NCC-system was ever meant to be exactly sequential. That it goes higher doesn't prove anything.

[Leo1]

Originally Posted by Mith

Might I have you tell me just where you got that information? Because Memory Alpha cites Valiant as the source of that information. Yet going through the script for it and plugging it into my Words Document (using the find option) I can't find it. I would ask that you find the evidence that supports your claim.

The answer is the ship dedication plaques on the bridges of the relevant ships - the crew always made a point of mounting one, and most of the later ones list the date the ship was commissioned and the shipyard at which it was built. Memory Alpha has a list of them all, look it up.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Dedication_plaque

[Mr. Oragahn]

Originally Posted by Lord Vespasian

I'll say again: Or perhaps you should have actually responded to what I was saying, and not to some fantasy that exists solely in your head?

Originally Posted by Mith

In Downfall of a Droid, Grievous uses an asteroid field as cover to get close to Anakin's fleet. Had they both GT level weapons, either side would have simply vaporized the asteroid field.

Originally Posted by General Schatten

Did Anakin know he was there? Did Grievous know he knew? Had either of them been in any lengthy battles? Did anything preclude that? You have a number of contextual issues which you haven't informed me of yet.

Originally Posted by Lord Vespasian

Don't fret, he's just trying to bullshit you. Grievous used the asteroids to cover his unshielded aft section from a hypothetical attacker.

Then tell me why I should believe, in light of this, and despite your stance in defense of GS against Mith's argument about firepower, why I should believe you were doing something else than disputing the reasoning Mith used to precisely attack the ICS firepower figure?
I'm rather sure most people would have gotten it that way as well.
So now, if I'm wrong, perhaps you could actually show what you were getting at.

Those are assumptions. We're dealing with different circumstances, different ships, and different crews on a fundamental level.

In other words, you're saying something to say nothing.
Try actually composing some kind of argument instead of throwing words left and right and hoping they'll logic flock together to do what you were too lazy to do on your own.
My paragraph contained two points: one direct reference to a fact you had immense problems to acknowledge, and I'm not even sure you have yet admitted being wrong, and a second one about what we could obviously expect from a ship that's part of a plan that is to trap an enemy fleet by baiting them. I never said that's what Anakin would do or what Grievous thought the Republic forces would do, but it's always a risk.

They also have to take into account Republic fighters.

Those fighters are purely irrelevant, especially with ICS yields and shield ratings given to warships, and those fighters are not shown to carry any other weapon aside from their energy cannons.

[quote]

That, and the fact that they didn't even move such a low fraction of their shielding ability to their stern as soon as they were being shot at proves that they would have not done it either if they had been shot at by a warship.

Grievous had already lost half his ships at that point and decided upon retreating, though.

Irrelevant.

Likely being pursued by Republic forces and forced to retreat at an angle Grievous was explicitely against approaching from in the first place.

It wasn't a given that they'd pursue the ships if they had moved out of the way, instead of continuing to drift forward and being knocked down because they left their aft unshielded.

I also like how Grievous didn't think the Munificents weren't capable of smoking out the three Venators effortlessly, despite the ICS putting their main forward gun as capable of melting a 1000 km wide ice moon in one shot (), which largely surpasses the firepower of a Venator by two orders of magnitude, only that.

Some cover is still better than none. Regardless of the firepower, they're not going to just punch through the asteroids like, surprise surprise, a "cannonball through glass."

That retarded claim, again?
A bolt from a warship, alone, is several meters long (and some very, very long, notably in the OT), without any deformity, and with so sign that the tail being weaker the head or the inverse. It is, after all, a short beam.
Meaning that in the first half meter of that bolt will already contain a high fraction of the overall bolt's energy. Say, a bolt of ten teratons, ten meters, you get 500 gigatons in the first half meter of that bolt. Far, far more than enough energy to completely vaporize a 1 km wide nickel-iron asteroid. The rest of the bolt will heat up whatever matter that's too solid left, which will be very little actually. The rest of the bolt will continue on.
We've seen blaster bolts do that, looking like they could "drill" through their target, and that's a bolt behaviour that's been observed with the cannons of Jango's Slave-I against asteroids.
We even had a turbolaser bolt in TESB destroy a small asteroid with a grazing shot and continue its route.

That, and of course the fact there would be several guns firing at once, much more than there were asteroids. That, again, requires watching the episode and acknowledging the low density of that asteroid field.

Keep up that delusional thinking.

That, after I quoted you saying so and then trying to pretend it was my argument.

What you fail to grasp, or are just trying to avoid, is the fact that the asteroids are merely incidental to Grievous' reasoning. He says so himself, he's going through the asteroids because attacking from above (and implicitely from below, as well) puts him at a disadvantage. The asteroids are only said to provide cover for the unshielded aft quarter.

Sure, because the Venators just can't bank or lower their noses a little.
It's like:

- Woohoo! I'm General Grievous, Commander of the present CIS fleet, crawling towards your position. I can see you, standing behind that asteroid belt! You will not escape me! Hey, we're actually going to wade through those rocks. Not because it would offer a decent protection against your weapons, but because based on your current orientation, doing so will put us clear of your main cannons, and the only way to defeat my formidable plan would be for you to nudge your ships a little. My plan is so exquisite! There's only thing missing, it's me having a mustache to twirl! Har Har Har!!
- Damn. He's outsmarted us. How are we going to point our main guns at the asteroid field that's right in front of us?? We're doomed!!

Again, your intelligence is probably just as good as what you're giving Grievous and Anakin credits for.

Except then they're not attacking from behind, are they?

Except I didn't talk about the three ones standing in front of the fleet.

Exactly. Hence why he screamed "Impossible!" when he was outflanked. He expected to have more time, time the asteroids provide in the form of cover.

Thank you for admitting I'm right.
1. The cover would indeed be relevant. Which we know is impossible with ICS yields.
2. And indeed, his "impossible!" is nothing more than his emotional reaction to being caught in a trap which actually managed to deal damage to his ships so soon. Notice that his "impossible!" doesn't come right after the droid says they've been outflanked, but after they already lost a warship.

I don't care about that. Vaporized, shattered, teleported into happy land, it doesn't matter. The asteroids ceased to be an obstacle. The asteroid field would be cleared away in no time.

Don't be so pissed off because you said something ridiculous. I know you don't care, but it's a pity. Were you wiser, you'd have already abandoned that silly argument, for the reason I already gave you. For some reason, you seem to be incapable of paying attention to more than half the text you reply to.
Again: They were very small asteroids. Apples and oranges. Those around that planet called Bothawui were, for some of them, almost as big as the CIS ships.

That's a horrible analogy. A better one would be, if some poor schmuck like you can get his hands on a nuke, odds are the military isn't going to be too hard up for them. Nah, that's still awful, since nukes are actually hard to come by.

So are seismic mines, obviously. We saw and heard about them about, what? a very times in the entire movie saga and the EU, and they're exactly very useful in space.
This is still no conventional firepower though.

Hell, I remember there was a couple years old piece of EU that said that Slave-I was better armed than some warships.
Oh, Starships of the Galaxy, latest edition, says that Slave-I is "armed with more weapons than many capital starships carry".

Yeah, Grievous is really up shit creek, facing three Republic carriers with half his fleet already torn to shreds, isn't he?

So?

Oh, so now Grievous is suddenly unreliable?

That would be your argument, always.
As far as I'm concerned, I don't consider this to be a mark of lack of reliability just because someone falls into a daring trap, devised by someone who decided to put the life of clonetroopers at risks by sticking them inside an asteroid field.

Nah, see, that's some bullshit right there. The asteroids serve only to protect the unshielded aft quarter, anything else is mere speculation.

See above.

Yeah? And? Was there a point in there anywhere?
You do know how arguments work, don't you? You actually have to, you know, argue something.

Oh yes, my point must be so cryptic...
Try the math, you dolt. No, really. Slow speed impact, but ICS claims shields copping with teratons of energy. It shouldn't be too hard, even for you.
Yet the droid is very concerned though about the asteroids.
I didn't expect you to form an argument against that, so I take it as a concession.

Oh fuck off already. Your argument is little more than "You're wrong because I think so!" and crying over the fact that your entirely unsolicited opinion is just that.

So I understand you're leaving this thread with nothing worthwhile to add. Good.

[Mith]

Originally Posted by Leo1

The answer is the ship dedication plaques on the bridges of the relevant ships - the crew always made a point of mounting one, and most of the later ones list the date the ship was commissioned and the shipyard at which it was built. Memory Alpha has a list of them all, look it up.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Dedication_plaque

Then it's fallen under soft canon.

Ie, Brannon & Bragga explained that some things on screen aren't canon. Some things like Archer's bio in the mirror universe (which is the same as his bio from another episode in the normal one) were either production mistakes or some such. Another production mistake, if you'd notice, was the USS Prometheus NX prototype, where the VFX team made a mistake on the hull, giving it the wrong number, where as the plaque placed it at a higher number.

That's the first problem. The second problem is that we don't know whether ships are given a registry before, during, or after they're built. We also don't know if Starfleet had run into some difficulties during the mass production process due to the several issues the Defiant class was well known for.

So your attempting to mount an argument based on shaky evidence.

[Mith]

Originally Posted by Leo1

I don't need to do any such thing.

You claimed it, thus you must back it up.

You constantly ask for "proof" of all and sundry - do you see me asking you for "proof" for your assertions? We are in rationalization and argument territory here, and have been for ages. Your assertions are not canon facts, no matter how much you wish they were. At the end of the day you are trying to argue away a canon fact you dislike, and I am rebutting that argument.

I asked for evidence. You will either supply it or concede. Making a rational argument is fine, so long as you can back it up with evidence. You have not.

What does this mean, exactly? The two situations are entirely inapplicable - you're referring to two operations in the middle of a full-scale quadrant war. The obvious response to anyone saying "why wasn't the fleet in Operation Return used for the battle at Chin'toka" is "the war has progressed since then and the fleet used in Operation Return has sufferred attrition/ been broken up for other duties/etc". There's no full-scale war here.

Um, no. Operation Return was a massive conflict because it woud have ended the war if the Dominion had been successful. That's why the Federation had gathered the elements of two fleets composing of six hundred ships to take it back.

Other times however, ship assault numbers range in high double digits or low tripple digits. Because despite the importance of Chin'toka, it wasn't so important that both sides would have thrown massive numbers.

And this would be my point. War isn't a place where everything is black and white. You just don't have important or unimportant targets--sure those do exist, but threats are catagorized by how much the target is worth in form of shades of grey. So while say, Chin'toka was worth enough to send about a hundred ships to keep after the Breen went to take the system back, it wasn't worth gathering two fleets. However, in the case of a you do it or you lose the war thing, the Federation was willing to commit numbers 2-6x the numbers we usually see for their battles and the Dominion dedicated double that number. Why? Because the battle was that important.

Same thing here. The Calamari are an important naval target, but at that point, they weren't important enough to warrant the Navy pulling ships from all over the galaxy to one remote sector to take the system back due to the Galactic Civil War. However, if there was a reserve fleet waiting to attack any threat anywhere, then why not take out Mon Calamari? There's nothing that would make it take long, due to the speed of hyperdrive, there's no significant drain on the reserve fleet's numbers, and it would stop the rebels from building ships and damaging the 3.88 billion credit warships that were so expensive that it nearly tore the Empire apart.

Garbage. ISD's do not take years to build. A shipyard like KDY or Fondor can build an ISD in exactly six months, we know that from Starships of the Galaxy (2001 Ed). And don't ask again for proof, I already posted what the source said pages ago, pull your finger out and go find it.

Unfortunately, you've seemed to have fallen into the mechanics trap. Your entire argument is based upon mechanics. In fact, your quote even mentions using the table which in turn uses the D&D sizes.


Even worse, you gloss right over the mechanics:

In general, a single construction slip needs one week to build a ship for each construction point of the ship.

What the hell is a construction point?

Oh wait, it's a mechanical reference.

This means that building an Imperial II Star Destroyer in a single slip can take up to 640 weeks, while the Executor would take 2,109 weeks.

To cut down on long construction times, ships are generally assigned to dozens of slips. The work of building smaller ships can't be divided among as many slips. The maximum number of slips that can be assigned to a single ship's construction is based on its size, as defined in Table 3-1.

This chart is also based entirely on mechanics.

Construction time can also be reduced by the skill of the technicians building the ship and the quality of the shipyard where they're working. Shipyards have a construction multiple, which is multiplied by the base construction time. High-quality shipyards can have a construction multiple as high as 0.5 or even 0.3, while makeshift shipyards can have multiples of 1.5 or 2

Construction multiples? Again, why are you using mechanics? Those aren't acceptable here (oh believe me, I've tried).

Also, we do have this:

Star Wars Source book
Warship construction is a lengthy, complicated business. The pre-construction phase alone—original inception, funding, design, creation of production facilities, training of personnel, requisition of materials – can, for a large ship, take years; the actual construction for the vessel usually isn’t much faster.

It flat out says that it takes years to accumilate the materials and construction isn't much faster. So even if we did want to go by your numbers, it's clear that fluff overrides it.



Furthermore, we also have the issue that Kuat is a private construction yard. While it may be possible for her by game mechanics to spit out an ISD II every 6 months, the problem is that it doesn't dedicate all or even most of its slips for just that purpose.

I've repeatedly done so.

No you haven't. You claimed that because some Imperials display infighting, that it must have happened here. This is an unsopportable argument because in order for us to accept that your argument is correct, we would need to accept that all Imperials infight to the point of hurting themselves.

You claimed that the target wasn't a threat. You haven't done so.

Now, time to put you to proof - show how many times the Rebel's handful of Star Cruisers destroyed Imperial Star Destroyers.

I didn't say they destroyed them, did I? I indicated it was possible due to the fact that they were able to deal heavy blows just by fighting them--and they came out on top:

The Imperial Navy badly underestimated the ptency of the Mon Cal cruisers at first, being simply unable to believe that their mighty ships could be menaced by “converted pleasure craft” built by “fish-headed gravity dwellers.” However, after several individual engagements in which even Imperial-class Star Destroyers came out much worse against the nimble cruisers, the Navy has begun to take them seriously indeed.

It even says that the Empire was starting to take them seriously after several engagements where their ISDs came out worse than the TC80.

Explain why a fleet would be at all concerned with the loss of one, when just a single shipyard has the capacity to provide them with almost 500 new ships in six months.

Just like my 22nd level fighter has the capacity to fall off the Empire State Building, get up, and fight off several trolls. Hence, Drizzt is capable of slaughtering entire legions of Space Marines.

In other words, your claims about Mon Calamari being a huge threat are obviously nonsense.

Which you based on game mechanics and ignoring a quote I've already posted.

How do you think this helps you? You're saying Dac is a huge existential threat to the Imperial Starfleet, right? How could they possibly not decide that they could 'sacrifice several star systems' was worth it to destroy Dac?

Because apparently it wasn't worth it. In fact, we see that they were too unsure to make that sort of commitment here:

Originally Posted by Wizard of the Coast, Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds
Rebel ships were dispatched to protect the sector.

Meanwhile the shipyards began turning out warships at dizzying speed...

Imperial forces harried the fringes of the Calamari Sector but shied away from a showdown, wary of committing too many forces to such a remote region with the Rebels causing trouble across the galaxy. Following the battle of Yavin, the Calamarian Council reversed itself and agreed to become part of the Rebellion. Nearly four years later, Admiral Ackbar led Mon Calamari's finest warships to victory at the Battle of Endor.

In any event, the notion that they 'sacrificed several systems' - as if star systems would be moronic enough to throw themselves into open revolt because of the absence of an Imperial force for a few days, is clearly nonsensical. It is especially so when you realise that the Rebellion would've certainly got wind of the Empire 'losing' star systems and then would've wondered just what was going on, and they would realise what was going on.

No, the idea that the Empire gave anything significant up to trap the Rebel fleet at Endor is entirely unworkable.

I stated it was a possibility. In fact, I stated that we have no evidence of this either way, hence was my entire point. I did not claim they had been forced to sacrifice sectors or systems. Why? No evidence. But on that same note, you do not have evidence that they just easily took these ships from a reserve fleet. If you want to claim they did, then you must prove it.

Strawman, again. I never said that the Rebel fleet was a lower priority target than Mon Calamari. That has nothing to do with anything. This has to do with your ridiculously exaggerated conception of the threat Dac represents, independently.

How is it a strawman Leo1? You claimed that because the Empire was able to supply ships at Endor to take out the Rebel fleet, that this must then mean that they could have done it with Calamari, hence the Empire didn't care. Logically, this would force any rational person to conclude that if the Empire could spare it for a smaller target, then a larger target should have been hit long ago. However, if you are suggesting that it wasn't a lower prority target, then sending a large task force to take it out doesn't mean anything to us.

And yet even the RASB admits that the Rebels have had very little success convincing planets otherwise. Why do you think that is?

Oh it says it right out:

Though there are many systems which are generally sympathetic to the Alliance, only a few are willing to openly support it, the others effectively cowed by fear of Imperial retribution. This is not unjustified—if the Empire discovers that a planet has been actively assisting the Alliance, it uses the harshest means at its disposal to punish the planet –witness again Alderaan.
Still, it takes time and effort to find and properly chastise Rebel-friendly planets, particularly if they possess space-going fleets which could mount any kind of effective resistance. Though the Imperial Navy is incredibly strong, it cannot be everywhere at once. The Empire is fully aware of the help which the Alliance receives from the planet Calamari, but the Calamarians maintain a formidable defensive fleet in the system. The Empire has yet to be able to spare the ships from other, more important duties to breakthrough the Cal’s defenses and reduce the annoying planet to rubble.

It says right out that they'll be punished if they're discovered. It also says it takes time if they have defensive fleets.

Don't be absurd. Your claim that the SWSB contradicts itself merely demonstrates that you can't interpret a source to save your life, not any problem on my part.

Ad Hominem and Begging the Question.

No, it doesn't. He is simply objectively wrong on that point.

Yes, because using just like my 18th level barbarian can jump in a pool of lava and wade his way to the other side, so can Wulfgar.

LUUUUlGIC!

Those 'calculations' have already been provided. They are in this thread. Go back and find them.

Yes, game mechanics. Want to see what I can calculate a red dragon's breath weapon based entirely on a mechanical stone wall?

You do realise the Empire builds other ships apart from ISDs, right?

Your reasoning is completely broken. Military buildups take time to bring together, the Empire having millions of ships after 20 years in existence is perfectly consistent with its industrial capacity - and you're also assuming the Empire was going full bore in peacetime, which is equally silly.

We also know that the Empire uses old outdated ships from the time of the Old Republic. Not exactly fair to assume that they built all one point six million ships in the span of twenty years is it?

I wonder, did you even see the quote I provided from the Rebellion Era Sourcebook?

Which quote?

To find Luke Skywalker.

Wow, and here it was because I thought Vader both wanted Luke AND TO KILL OFF THE REBELS.

Wow, so an infinitesimal fraction of one sector fleet. Yeah, very threatening.

That doesn't include the ships they refitted, it's the ones they build.

Endor proves it could filed the numbers. It really is just that simple.

Begging the question.

Picking my canon? And what do you think you're doing?

Because you are not supporting your argument with evidence, rather just taking on instance that lacks critical information and assuming it follows your claim.

What utter nonsense. So you think the deployment of an Imperial fleet would somehow have cost them more than what taking out Calamari would have offered? How, exactly?

I do not know. It is canon that the Empire has a strained fleet. You claim that Endor says no to this--but you can't support this because we don't know what sort of consequences occured because these ships were pulled. Did it have significant costs? Little? None? We don't know, so trying to use Endor as an example is flawed.

If however, if we take canon as a whole, to the point where the Empire is unwilling to commit four squadrons to take a system, then it seems rather conclusive that taking these ships off was either a risk or a sacrifice.

Sure it is. That will remain the case until you come up with a coherent explanation for what the Empire possibly has to lose from diverting a fleet (that need not even be that large, lol) for a few hours/ days to destroy the Dac shipyards.

I don't know, since I don't know what forces would be moved. However, it is canon and I will quote it again:

Originally Posted by Wizard of the Coast, Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds
Rebel ships were dispatched to protect the sector.

Meanwhile the shipyards began turning out warships at dizzying speed...

Imperial forces harried the fringes of the Calamari Sector but shied away from a showdown, wary of committing too many forces to such a remote region with the Rebels causing trouble across the galaxy. Following the battle of Yavin, the Calamarian Council reversed itself and agreed to become part of the Rebellion. Nearly four years later, Admiral Ackbar led Mon Calamari's finest warships to victory at the Battle of Endor.

That they were wary of comitting sources to the assault because of the Rebels causing trouble across the galaxy. What does that tell you?

It's not necessary for me to claim that at all. Further, building the Death Star was an Imperial objective from before ANH. It's destruction wouldn't have changed anything. We don't know when construction of the second began, AFAIK (definitely not immediately) but it would have been part of Imperial calculus for years.

No Leo1, keep on target.

We are discussing about laying a trap for the Rebellion. You claimed that Palpatine and Vader were planning this for a long time. I want evidence that this was the plan from the start, rather than something that Palpatine came up with later. For all we know, he came up with it the weekend before after drinking too much beer and smoking weed.

What 'evidence to support this'? Everything I just stated about Hapes is entirely factual.

Would you care to actually answer my questions, rather than make a blank statement?

Refer above. I want evidence. You will support your claim that the Empire has no reserve forces. I want solid, canon evidence stating that there were no reserves rather than the quote saying there were.

See, I can do it too.

No Leo1, keep up please. I am not saying that there isn't a reserve force--or even a reserve force of just 10%. What I am saying is that the reserve force is being used. In paticular for the Rebel uprising. These would be ships that are sent to take out the threats that rise up against the Empire like a rebellious planet or a troublesome area of space where the Rebels are operating.

You're the one claiming that the reserve fleet just sits around and does nothing, despite civil unrest on a galactic scale.

And furthermore, given that you've outright refused to provide evidence for your claim, might I take it as a concession?

[Leo1]

Originally Posted by Mith

Then it's fallen under soft canon.

Twaddle. Its on screen. If you want to argue its a mistake, you prove it.

It's an especially asinine claim to try and make when your "NCC numbers are sequential" argument is entirely invented in the first place.

[Leo1]

Originally Posted by Mith

You claimed it, thus you must back it up.

Same goes to you I'm afraid.

I asked for evidence. You will either supply it or concede. Making a rational argument is fine, so long as you can back it up with evidence. You have not.

I have. The canon and common sense speaks for itself, no matter how much you insist otherwise.

Um, no. Operation Return was a massive conflict because it woud have ended the war if the Dominion had been successful. That's why the Federation had gathered the elements of two fleets composing of six hundred ships to take it back.

Other times however, ship assault numbers range in high double digits or low tripple digits. Because despite the importance of Chin'toka, it wasn't so important that both sides would have thrown massive numbers.

[Pompous Mith Asking For Evidence]Prove it. You will supply this evidence or concede. You have not backed this up with evidence.[/]

See how easy that is?

And this would be my point. War isn't a place where everything is black and white. You just don't have important or unimportant targets--sure those do exist, but threats are catagorized by how much the target is worth in form of shades of grey. So while say, Chin'toka was worth enough to send about a hundred ships to keep after the Breen went to take the system back, it wasn't worth gathering two fleets. However, in the case of a you do it or you lose the war thing, the Federation was willing to commit numbers 2-6x the numbers we usually see for their battles and the Dominion dedicated double that number. Why? Because the battle was that important.

Same thing here. The Calamari are an important naval target, but at that point, they weren't important enough to warrant the Navy pulling ships from all over the galaxy to one remote sector to take the system back due to the Galactic Civil War. However, if there was a reserve fleet waiting to attack any threat anywhere, then why not take out Mon Calamari? There's nothing that would make it take long, due to the speed of hyperdrive, there's no significant drain on the reserve fleet's numbers, and it would stop the rebels from building ships and damaging the 3.88 billion credit warships that were so expensive that it nearly tore the Empire apart.

Bullshit. If the Empire could assemble a fleet for Endor, it could assemble a fleet for Dac. Your incoherent mumbling that "oh but Endor was SUPER DUPER MEGA important but Dac was only SUPER DUPER IMPORTANT, so they only pulled the ships for Endor" is just that.

If they could do one, but not the other, then Dac can't have mattered that much to them. Period.

Unfortunately, you've seemed to have fallen into the mechanics trap. Your entire argument is based upon mechanics. In fact, your quote even mentions using the table which in turn uses the D&D sizes.

It's an entirely accurate rough estimate, and I see no reason whatsoever to assume otherwise, given that it is consistent with Agents of Chaos, which has already been quoted (i.e. Orbital Shipyard 1321 of Fondor being on track to build the Star Destroyer Amerce in less than a year) and The Force Unleashed, which not only showed an entirely new shipyard built at Raxus Prime in less than six months (Galen Marek/Starkiller spent 6 months in convalesence after being backstabbed by Darth Vader before returning to Raxus Prime after he killed Jedi Master Paratus) - but that shipyard had also almost completed its first Star Destroyer:-

Originally Posted by The Force Unleashed novel

THE SHIPYARD ROSE UP OVER the planet's filthy horizon like some strange, mechanical moon. Disk shaped, with complex docks and cranes radiating from its outer edge, it was by far the largest artificial structure she had ever seen. Over a dozen Star Destroyers were currently in dry dock: one nearly complete, the others triangular shells at various stages of manufacture. Giant balls of ore floated near the station, awaiting refinement. Huge arcing sparks shot from the Star Destroyers as massive, complicated machines welded panels in place.

There had been no sign of such a facility when she and Starkiller had been there just months before. Her mind boggled at the speed with which it had been constructed. She found it hard to believe, and wondered what other surprises they might find on the planet's surface.

If you actually read the thread as opposed to being constantly behind, you'd know this.

Oh, not to mention the tidbit of the Mon Calamari building one Star Cruiser every six months. Or are you going to claim Kuat Drive Yards, the greatest shipyard in the galaxy, literally surrounded by a gigantic space ring of shipyards, is many times slower than the Mon Calamari, which didn't have its own space ring until the Legacy Era, a century later?

(In this regard, I should note the Mon Calamari shipyards had 1,000 slips, so at full capability they should be building many more per six months. However, they were still only building just one cruiser every six months. This is unsurprising - they are an isolated manufacturer with fuck all resources and neither they nor the Rebels have an massive galactic-scale budget to either churn out or maintain a large warfleet, unlike the Empire)

Leaving aside that the canon is already quite conclusive on this matter, "game mechanics" would be an argument you could try if anything Starships of the Galaxy says is dependent on dice or similar RPG conventions - there's no dice or any such nonsense involved here. The number of slips of the relevant shipyards, the 'standard' time it takes to build an ISD and SSD, the fact that premier shipyards can build said ships faster, together with the common practice of dividing large ships amongst multiple slips to speed up construction time are all simply facts, and have nothing to do with game mechanics whatsoever.

Even worse, you gloss right over the mechanics:

What the hell is a construction point?

Oh wait, it's a mechanical reference.

Oh wait, you can't read. The source says flat out how many weeks it takes to build an ISD on a single slip. We don't need to count construction points. Maybe you should spend less time trying to find flaws that aren't there, and more time on your reading comprehension.

This chart is also based entirely on mechanics.

Utter nonsense, as already indicated. There is no reason to assume what you call 'mechanics' are off by a factor of years, and it is entirely consistent with other evidence which has already been quoted.

Construction multiples? Again, why are you using mechanics? Those aren't acceptable here (oh believe me, I've tried).

More twaddle. They're an indicator of the difference in quality between shipyards. Perfectly acceptable and obvious fact to take into account.

Also, we do have this:

It flat out says that it takes years to accumilate the materials and construction isn't much faster. So even if we did want to go by your numbers, it's clear that fluff overrides it.

Only for those who clearly can't read. That quote is obviously referring to everything from conception of a new ship class to construction of the prototype, and not series production, which takes less than a year, according to four different sources - Agents of Chaos, The Force Unleashed, Starships of the Galaxy, and the Mon Calamari's own speed of construction already referenced.

Again, if you actually read the thread, you wouldn't be wasting everyone's time with these pathetic non-arguments.

Furthermore, we also have the issue that Kuat is a private construction yard. While it may be possible for her by game mechanics to spit out an ISD II every 6 months, the problem is that it doesn't dedicate all or even most of its slips for just that purpose.

ROFLMAO. More silly bullshit. This is a lot like saying that Newport News wouldn't prioritise USN orders in a time of war because its a private shipyard. For those who aren't completely ignorant of real life, this is utterly laughable - war is good for business. Non-priority shipbuilding would get shunted. Shipyards are much happier building war cruisers than they are building say, some civilian freighter. They get more money, their workforce is working longer, its all round better for everyone. Corporations love wars. It's infinite money.

And "it doesn't even dedicate all or even most of its slips for that purpose." How do you think shipyards work, anyway? Do you think they build the ships and go "hey, Empire, want this Star Destroyer?" No. The Empire orders what it wants, and KDY fulfills the order. The point is capability and capacity.

One also has to marvel at the laughable level of nitpicking this displays - as if this somehow changes the difference in shipbuilding capacity between the UFP and the Empire in any way whatsoever

No you haven't. You claimed that because some Imperials display infighting, that it must have happened here. This is an unsopportable argument because in order for us to accept that your argument is correct, we would need to accept that all Imperials infight to the point of hurting themselves.

Nonsense. It's quite supportable. It goes to tendency.

You claimed that the target wasn't a threat. You haven't done so.

Simply repeating something over and over and over and over doesn't make it true, I'm afraid.

I didn't say they destroyed them, did I? I indicated it was possible due to the fact that they were able to deal heavy blows just by fighting them--and they came out on top:

It even says that the Empire was starting to take them seriously after several engagements where their ISDs came out worse than the TC80.

In other words, you refuse to answer the question and just repeat the same tired old nonsense you're repeatedly trying to float.

That the Rebellion's tiny handful of MC80s (don't know where the hell you got TC80) are a tactical threat proves nothing, no matter how much you wish it did. Do learn the difference between tactical and strategic balance.

Just like my 22nd level fighter has the capacity to fall off the Empire State Building, get up, and fight off several trolls. Hence, Drizzt is capable of slaughtering entire legions of Space Marines.

Incomprehensible. Are you on drugs?

Which you based on game mechanics and ignoring a quote I've already posted.

Wrong. If you paid any fucking attention whatsoever to my discussion with Oragahn, or the posts I've already referred to, you'd know I've addressed this.

Its funny how you repeat arguments already made, indicating you've clearly read them, but are incapable of reading or even acknowledging the responses to same.

Because apparently it wasn't worth it. In fact, we see that they were too unsure to make that sort of commitment here:

I stated it was a possibility. In fact, I stated that we have no evidence of this either way, hence was my entire point. I did not claim they had been forced to sacrifice sectors or systems. Why? No evidence. But on that same note, you do not have evidence that they just easily took these ships from a reserve fleet. If you want to claim they did, then you must prove it.

Since as you admit there's no evidence the Imperial fleet would be forced to sacrifice sectors or systems from moving ships for an operation that would last barely hours to days to smash the Mon Calamari shipyards, and the fact that they did so at Endor is explicit evidence against - their not attacking Mon Calamari is because it didn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

This is simply the umpteenth instance of you trying to eat your cake and have it too - simultaneously try to argue Mon Calamari is a dire threat that must be immediately wiped out based on their strategically insignificant, tiny number of MC80s, whilst trying to make that consistent with how easily they could've done it from the films.

How is it a strawman Leo1? You claimed that because the Empire was able to supply ships at Endor to take out the Rebel fleet, that this must then mean that they could have done it with Calamari, hence the Empire didn't care. Logically, this would force any rational person to conclude that if the Empire could spare it for a smaller target, then a larger target should have been hit long ago. However, if you are suggesting that it wasn't a lower prority target, then sending a large task force to take it out doesn't mean anything to us.

I've already explained how its a strawman. Nothing I said to rebut your assumptions is at all contingent, whatsoever, on Dac being a larger priority target.

Oh it says it right out:

It says right out that they'll be punished if they're discovered. It also says it takes time if they have defensive fleets.

Exactly.

Ad Hominem and Begging the Question.

Inability to articulate a proper logical fallacy to save your life.

Yes, because using just like my 18th level barbarian can jump in a pool of lava and wade his way to the other side, so can Wulfgar.

LUUUUlGIC!

More non-responsive (and probably drug induced?) raving.

Yes, game mechanics. Want to see what I can calculate a red dragon's breath weapon based entirely on a mechanical stone wall?

Pathetic delaying tactic, already conclusively rebutted.

We also know that the Empire uses old outdated ships from the time of the Old Republic. Not exactly fair to assume that they built all one point six million ships in the span of twenty years is it?

All 1.6 million? Mith, Mith Mith. The Empire has many more than 1,024 sectors. That's a lower limit number:-

Originally Posted by ISB

Sectors are grouped together into larger territorial entities called regions . The Empire has countless regions, which can contain from as few as three to upwards of thousands of sectors.

Thousands of sectors. And so what if the Imperial Starfleet had some old ships? It means nothing, they'd be a minor fraction of combat strength given the Republic's state of militarization prior to the Clone Wars. One can easily ascertain this as fact when realising that AFAIK not a single old ship in the Imperial Starfleet is remotely noteworthy (i.e. even known) except for the Dreadnought heavy cruisers. Which are quite respectable for an old heavy cruiser.

Which quote?

Originally Posted by Rebellion Era Sourcebook, Saga Edition

The Imperial military is a massive organization, with tens of trillions of regular army soldiers, trillions of fleet crew, and a vast force of stormtroopers both cloned and conditioned. The sheer weight of numbers enables the Empire to simply overwhelm opponents in head-to-head battle.

Wow, and here it was because I thought Vader both wanted Luke AND TO KILL OFF THE REBELS.

No, it's mostly if not entirely about Luke. Again, please pay attention next time you watch the movies, mmmkay.

That doesn't include the ships they refitted, it's the ones they build.

And how many ships do you think they refitted?

Begging the question.

Stating a fact. So sorry you don't' like it.

Because you are not supporting your argument with evidence, rather just taking on instance that lacks critical information and assuming it follows your claim.

Nonsense. The information is all there for the reasonable, rational person to see and understand.

I do not know. It is canon that the Empire has a strained fleet. You claim that Endor says no to this--but you can't support this because we don't know what sort of consequences occured because these ships were pulled. Did it have significant costs? Little? None? We don't know, so trying to use Endor as an example is flawed.

Mere whinging. Obviously no significant consequences whatsoever - and by significant I mean the loss of any planets and sectors. Not only does it fly in the face of common sense to assume any planet, let alone sector, would be stupid enough to revolt because of the absence of a fraction of their ships for a few hours or days, if same did happen, the Rebellion would undoubtedly get wind of it and realize that something was up.

If however, if we take canon as a whole, to the point where the Empire is unwilling to commit four squadrons to take a system, then it seems rather conclusive that taking these ships off was either a risk or a sacrifice.

No, if we take canon as a whole, where we know the Empire maintains strong reserves in the Core, it seems rather conclusive that they did not see Dac as important.

I don't know, since I don't know what forces would be moved. However, it is canon and I will quote it again:

Ah, right - so you can't explain how your position makes any sense. Gotcha.

No Leo1, keep on target.

No, you read properly. What I said is obvious and clearly understood. If you don't understand it, say so. The existence of the Death Star as an instrument of Imperial power had been part of Palpatine's calculus for years. The specific plan to trap the Rebels was devised by Prince Xizor at some point during its construction we don't know when, apart from the fact that it was before 3.5ABY.

Would you care to actually answer my questions, rather than make a blank statement?

Again, everything you need to know has been provided.

No Leo1, keep up please. I am not saying that there isn't a reserve force--or even a reserve force of just 10%. What I am saying is that the reserve force is being used.

Then it's not a reserve. Learn the definition.

You're the one claiming that the reserve fleet just sits around and does nothing, despite civil unrest on a galactic scale.

Strawman, which I've already called you on once.

And furthermore, given that you've outright refused to provide evidence for your claim, might I take it as a concession?

I think the only one offering concessions here is you, implicitly, what with the ever growing number of arguments between us that you've dropped/snipped in the course of this thread.

[JC - Interrupted]

Originally Posted by Mith

It even says that the Empire was starting to take them seriously after several engagements where their ISDs came out worse than the TC80.

I need to point out that "coming out worse" doesn't imply that the MC80 actually destroyed the ISD. Given how few of the MC80s the Alliance had and the fact that they are explicitly stated to be incredibly hard to repair due to their unstandardized design, it is tremendously unlikely that an MC80 captain would be willing to risk an extended one-on-one slugging match against an ISD which substantially outguns his own ship. After all, the loss of an ISD is a serious blow to Imperial pride but a drop in the bucket in terms of military strength, wheras the loss of even a single MC80 would be a major disaster for the Alliance. Those ships are literally priceless to the Rebels; a "duel to the death" which results in an ISD being destroyed in exchange for an MC80 being severely damaged is a tactical victory but a strategic loss.

Given this strategic reality, "coming out worse" makes perfect sense if we theorize that it refers a Mon Cal on a hit-and-fade raid taking advantage of its heavier defensive shielding and superior starfighter wing to inflict significant hull damage on an ISD before its own shields reach collapse, then jumping out. A Mon Cal with no hull damage against an ISD with light hull damage is certainly "coming out worse" and a much more annoying situation for the Empire than fighter raids which merely attrit its TIE fighter hordes, while at the same time accurately reflecting the fact that even going by their own propaganda, the first-generation Mon Cals are NOT a direct match for an ISD.

One will also note that the RoTJ novelization strongly implies that the battle Endor was the first time a Rebel fleet ever actually dared to stand toe-to-toe against the Empire -- and even then only out of sheer desperation, because it was their ONLY shot at taking out the Death Star II. Notice what the Rebels' immediate first instinct was? "Star Destroyer fleet, oh shit! ABORT THE OPERATION AND JUMP OUT NOW!"

[Leo1]

A fun little fact to share given the notion put forth by Mith that 3.88 billion credits on an ISD is a lot of money to the Empire:-

Originally Posted by DESB

Emperor Palpatine was responsible for driving military investment and development over the past few decades, resulting in many new scientific advances. With his newly reorganized and centralized navy and army, there was nothing to stop the self-proclaimed Emperor from seizing total control. However, he didn't count on the resourcefulness of those who opposed him.

In an escalating arms race for supremacy, the Empire has spent quintillions of credits on new weapons systems, from gravity well projectors to cloaking devices, all in an attempt to stem the tide of revolt. While the Rebels have countered this with skill and daring, scientific research gained an increasing share of Alliance funding as the war dragged on.

Quintillions of credits on new weapons systems, alone.

SWRPG, 2nd Edition, p. 199
The Known Galaxy's economy is perhaps the ultimate
"economy of scale." Worlds with billions of inhabitants
producing trillions of credits in goods per year are little more
than a footnote in the grand scheme of things.

Worlds with billions of inhabitants producing trillions of credits in goods per year just aren't that big a deal.

Each planet in the Cluster has a consulate, with an Imperial Consul-General in charge of it.

There are few Imperial officials stationed at the consulates, and their duties are very limited, though they have the formal authority to take over the local government. For instance, while there are only seven Imperial officials on Adarlon, yearly they collect nearly four billion credits in taxes from its government.

Seven officials on an entire planet, and they collect 4 billion bucks in taxes from its government. That's an Outer Rim planet, by the way, not a core system. One can only imagine the taxes collected from them in comparison.

[White Fang]

Didn't Xixor's company and the Black Sun provide the majority of supplies and technical equipment for the second Death Star alone?

[Admiral Vice]

Originally Posted by Mith

Then it's fallen under soft canon.

Ie, Brannon & Bragga explained that some things on screen aren't canon. Some things like Archer's bio in the mirror universe (which is the same as his bio from another episode in the normal one) were either production mistakes or some such. Another production mistake, if you'd notice, was the USS Prometheus NX prototype, where the VFX team made a mistake on the hull, giving it the wrong number, where as the plaque placed it at a higher number.

That's the first problem. The second problem is that we don't know whether ships are given a registry before, during, or after they're built. We also don't know if Starfleet had run into some difficulties during the mass production process due to the several issues the Defiant class was well known for.

So your attempting to mount an argument based on shaky evidence.

Dude, I'm sorry, but that's just a lame argument to try to put forward. There are no hard or soft canon when it comes to Star Trek. There are no levels of canon at all. Everything we see on screen is considered canon. If there's a VFX error, the onus is on you to show the errors.

And really, this thread is just sad. I'm not a Warsie, far from it. In most SW vs. X debates, I generally support arguments proposed by l33tleboy or Mr. Oragahn. But the levels of incoherence and mental gymnastics which some are willing to stoop to in this thread in an effort to have their fav verse win is mind boggling.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Originally Posted by Leo1

RotJ is as solid and canonical as it gets. Not only did they do so, they did so without the Rebels and the Bothan spy network knowing anything about it - not the sort of thing you'd expect if Imperial systems were instantly going to rise up in revolt.

What you're saying has little relevance to the point I made.
http://forums.spacebattles.com/showp...postcount=1150

Which is far in excess of what is required to smash Dac, actually.

Eventually, if that was true, the fact is that they didn't do it. Executor, for one, was assigned to the defense of the DSII, plus some other ISDs. Actually, as someone pointed out before, probably evilauthor, remove the Endor defense fleet from the armada present at Endor to crush the Rebels, and you'd suddenly not find yourself with such a margin to destroy Rebel worlds.

The Rebellion Era Sourcebook (a D20 RPG source that largely focuses on the rise of the Rebellion and the years after the Battle of Yavin) clearly establishes that shit blew into the Empire's face as the Rebels won at Yavin, and the Empire had to deploy fleet to hunt them and become indistinctly brutal against its own worlds:

Originally Posted by RESB, p.58

After Yavin

The Rebel victory at Yavin was a tremendous boost to the Alliance. More and more beings rallied to the cause of freedom and joined the Alliance, and the fires of the Rebellion spread across the galaxy. The Empire wasn't willing to allow this threat to go unanswered. The Imperial fleet mobilized, charged with locating the Rebels and their leaders by any means possible. So began three years of bitter fighting as the Rebels conducted wave upon wave of hit-and-run attacks against the Empire. For a while, these quick surgical attacks had the Empire reeling as it tried to develop a strategy for dealing with a foe that never stayed in one place for more than a few weeks at a time. Then the Emperor ordered his troops to attack anyone who might be aiding the Rebels, whether the Imperials had substantial proof or not. Unruly crowds were obliterated. Spaceports were bombarded from above. Extreme fear and excessive force became the foundation for Imperial strategy, and the galaxy shook with war.

The Empire, however, suffered in its own right in the wake of the destruction of the Death Star. Confusion and upheaval caused by the loss of so many key military officers led to a major shakeup in the Imperial hierarchy. Lord Darth Vader was placed in command of the mightiest task force ever assembled in recorded history, a fleet built around the new Super-class Star Destroyer Executor and charged with hunting down and exterminating the Rebel Alliance.

[...]

At the same time, the Empire was not above endangering its own citizens while on its quest to crush the Rebellion. Rebel sympathizers and supporters, whether suspected or condemned by actual proof, were routinely harassed, questioned, arrested, and even killed to flush out the true agitators. More often that not, these tyrannical and barbaric actions only served to harden the resolve of the Alliance and add more support to its cause. Meanwhile, planets were quarantined, whole species and civilizations were enslaved, and more and more prominent citizens were placed on the Empire's "most wanted" list.

1. Here goes the idea that the Empire wasn't a lid on a boiling pot. It's confirmed by the statistic that the Avenger had a track record of 483 planetary suppressions alone (WEG).
2. The "mightiest fleet" bit is a direct pick from the WEG book. Obviously, the Executor counted a lot in that.

No, it says the Empire is "wary" of doing so. Not that it is incapable. It's interesting that the only statements of direct incapability come from the Rebels.

"Incapable" alone is not my argument, nor what the book says.
Incapable of doing it without losing ground against Rebel attacks in the rest of the GE's territories, THAT is what the book says, quite clearly.
It's supported by the quotes above.

And yet we have the fleet at Endor able to effortlessly sweep aside the defences at Dac. Something's gotta give.

The Empire could only use a fraction of the armada seen at Endor.

I also gave you an example of seven Mon Cal cruisers and a couple support ships forcing more than 10 ISDs to retreat, that while the Rebels were taken by surprise, at Turkana.
We also see that at Endor, without the second Death Star's superlaser, the Rebel fleet was doing rather well when both sides fired at each other. They even managed to take the Executor down.

You also have to consider the size of the fleets the Empire could mobilize to hunt the Rebels. Examples: Task Force Vengeance and Death Squadron.
The Rebels have largely proved to be able to take down an Executor, and have also largely proved to defeat large imperial forces, or even survive against impossible odds, no matter the amount of ISDs.

That's simply complete nonsense. The fact of the Empire's industrial capacity entirely unambiguous and not subject to dispute, and does not rise and fall on your assertions that I'm 'blowing [what happened after the Emperor's death] out of proportion' - based on what evidence, eh? The Dark Empire Sourcebook is clear on what happened after Endor. The burden of proof is on you to show that what happened was somehow only a minor inconvenience, not I.

Claiming it's nonsense or indisputable is meaningless.
I asked you for clarification, not for you to tell me it's all in Dark Empire.
So again, when did those fleets of ships disappear exactly, and how many ships is that?

Give me ALL the facts you alluded to.
If you don't have the solid evidence, drop the claim.

Lazy generalisations. You're trying to make the situation look better than it was. The quote from the DESB says quite a bit different from "strife for a short period, but then there was a council and there was Isaard and Zsinj". That's simply a gross oversimplification of events.

Does it speak of a carnage that would explain, clearly, the scope of battles post-ROTJ, compared to your claims of super industry and gazillion ships which could all be crewed?

What about the fact that super mighty KDY was still working for the Empire after ROTJ?

Further:-

As can clearly be seen, that's a great bit more complicated than your trying to make out. Your appeal to the Council or Isaard as if the Empire remained a cohesive whole as opposed to a bunch of bickering satrapies destroying themselves with both inaction, territorialism and and infighting is obviously wrong.

I never pretended all was going well. That's precisely why I alluded to very low percentages of the former industrial might. But I'm convinced that I was not being obtuse in asking for the evidence of 1% of that might which you consider could easily be swapped between Death Star construction and ship building. 1% isn't excessive nor abusive in terms of request, and frankly it would be kinda silly to claim lower remainders without solid evidence that the Empire was totally crippled.

Remember, pages ago, you claimed a super industry that enabled the Empire to build a Death Star at ease practically anywhere it wanted to, without major concessions to make, and that this industrial might could easily be recycled into a traditional ship building force, for some insane warship production capability. You know, when you equaled the Death Star volume to a given number of ISDs, which turned out to be in the tens or hundreds of millions of ISDs.
Show me evidence that the Empire and its thousand sectors was so fragmented that it couldn't even come with a thousandth of its might after the death of the Emperor, and that the Death Star's construction was so modular in fact that one could stop it at anytime and turn the construction sources of a totally new and unique large station into ship building factories.
Remember that even the Rebellion Era sourcebook says that the shipyard construction schemes of KDY and other contractors relied on modularity (which also supposedly helped mask the Death Star's construction under bureaucracy, although it's clear that an absurdly vast amount of the Death Star was so unique that pieces that could fit on an ISD could not fit on a Death Star safe into the crust structure, if only for the fact that the size of the station was dictated by the required power core needed to feed all the main systems). So with this ability to move any part built anywhere to assemble them together into one place, it would obviously take little effort for Zsinj, for example, to have the bureaucratic hand of his structure to reorganize the work force. After all, the private contractors are all over the place, the shipyards exist in the hundred, and construction was modular and flexible. Even with losing 99% of the industry his territory previously held, he'd still be more than able to come with better than what he came with, if you were correct.
Even a single sector would contain enough subsectors, themselves containing several star systems, to provide all the raw materials and population to get those mighty ships flying out of docks in short order and properly crewed, when going with hypothetical numbers like you do. That said, although ore could come from anywhere, in relatively any system, the experience and academical training centers were not there.

As I said way before, the point is that the Emperor could not have both the Death Star and the millions of ISDs. It was a dilemma. Yes, the Empire could have had thousands more shipyards instead of building a Death Star. Hell, considering that it was about duplicating already existing assets, it would have probably been far cheaper than building a Death Star, and faster as well.
But then the other problem remains the same: crews, and the total crew of the DS is nothing to brag about.

That said, with StoG, it has become clear that most of the Empire's ships came from a very few points, and we're yet to see evidence that those few points could, alone, have the ship outputs you claim.
I said it was the Death Star OR the numerous ships, and I said that Empire couldn't even crew them anyway. You're still ought to prove that the Empire could have both, with appropriate crew numbers.

I also have that piece from the Technical Journal:

Originally Posted by Star Wars Technical Journal

The Imperial code name for the project became Death Star.
[...] [The] Emperor, pleased with the concept, ordered construction to begin with.
An unoccupied and isolated sector of space was chosen as the construction site. For nearly two years, every resources of the Empire was directed toward the completion of the project.

I left the reference about the firepower out (don't insist, it mentions a fusion reactor, just like in the Rebellion Era Sourcebook).
I'm not sure if this still fits with the Death Star history because it's become quite a mess at LFL about that, between the prototype, Horuz, Maw and the superlaser moved from one place to another. But we have a clear statement that the Death Star literally drained most of the Empire for two years at some point, most likely at the beginning. But nothing says it doesn't fit either.



That's for the industry.

There's also the ships which already existed, the present fleets.
You got a couple examples of some Moffs not taking orders from Coruscant anymore.
Your piece of text even says, right there, that Moffs were encouraged to be independent to a large degree. Funny is it, that their independence wouldn't allow them to muster those large fleets you're talking about, but of which we see little to nothing. I mean, even give me a single large engagement between two warlords and that would be the beginning of something, at least.

Who cares? The Imperial Remnant isn't the Empire. It's a total red herring, and will remain so. You can't just divide the Empire up like a pie and assume that each slice of the pie will have proportional strength to what the whole had. A nation is greater than the sum of its parts.

KDY still remained under control of the Empire post-Endor, which itsalf still was in control of many sectors, which were all the more sources of raw material to feed the hungry KDY with those billions of tons of material.
You try to ignore the fact Zsinj, who controlled 1/3 of the Empire, had to rely on pirates to complement the small task force he was able to send to KDY (7.5 ABY), in order to destroy the one Executor-class they were building that would threaten his own power base.
1/3 of the Empire. That would be what? More than 300,000 star systems.

That, and the Rebellion, when it turned to the New Republic in its very early days, around the Thrawn/Remnant era, was at the helm 3/4 of known territories. Yet, fleet production was far from stellar, and I don't even know if it got any better even when most people were united against the Yuuzhan Vong.

Let's get some more from the DESB:-

(Of course, that frivolous spending plans weren't as useless as thought - it was the reborn Emperor directing that such spending continue).

And how does this prove the destruction of the dormant industrial might? When a leader want things done, it can be done very fast. Industries don't vanish into subspace because of a crisis or lack of cohesion or proper orders. Shipyards do not get snuffed out of reality, and I very doubt that freighters responsible of shipping raw materials and modules for Imperial ships stopped existing as well.
When a powerful and charismatic man such as Zsinj, much more than Pestage, returns with control over 1/3 of the Empire, yet can't get a large fleet, it's obvious that on the average, the Empire wasn't that flexible at all. That and the references about how its Navy comprised many old warships, including old Star Destroyers.

There's also another thing to point out here, in that D6 stuff and D20 would either be extremely similar (D20 books copying entire pans of D6 material), or might seem to disagree on the scale of things, notably the industrial might of BOTH the Rebellion AND the Empire.
That, and I gave a quick look at the Dark Empire SB, and from the pages you quoted, there's no worthwhile reference to Isaard or Zsinj before the arrival(/return) of Thrawn, which is more than odd considering what both former figures achieved post-Endor.

Then, after Thrawn's success:-

Full-scale civil war between the Imperial Remnant. Destruction of entire planets from orbit.

Then "after Thrawn's success", indeed. Or... all after Thrawn's death, 9 ABY.
Way to miss the point, in other terms.
Clue: Pestage, Zsinj and Isaard all predate this, and so do all the cases I pointed at.

Moving on.

Again, the Mutiny postdates the cases under scrutiny.

The sources speak for themselves. I am indisputably correct.

You are indisputably correct in your error about the relevance of certain events in the Empire's history.

Starships of the Galaxy (2001 Ed.) already decides the entire issue. KDY can build an ISD in 6 months. And has enough slips to build precisely 481.75 ISDs per six months.

Somehow you are right about the first, but hypocritical about the second methinks. KDY can build 8.6715 more than Mon Cal going by those numbers, assuming a Mon Cal takes 640 weeks to build in a single slip as well (that despite being smaller). The Mon Cal less efficient multiplier takes care of the "artsy" thing.
Yet you continue to claim that Mon Cal yards can't produce enough ships to threaten the Empire, despite the second having much more territory to defend, which actually gives the Rebels an impressive higher and mobile concentration of heavy cruisers at their disposal.

EDIT: you can also refer to the quote on page 48 of this thread for Orbital Shipyard 1321 of Fondor building a Star Destroyer in less than a year.

OK. And about how many ships per year for those shipyards?
We know Fondor shipyards built a SSD, but schedule was hard to keep in sight due to revolts after the Imperial defeat at Yavin. Another reason why the Rebellion was not irrelevant.

I fail to see what point you're trying to make.

See two paragraphs above.

Wrong. It's clearly referring to production of the first ship, not all ships. Hence why ISDs and cruisers can be built in six months, not years.

No, it's a general statement about development AND production. Let's also consider the possibility that WotC's figures point to faster building rates than WEG's.
That said, the x ships/shipyard numbers seem to solely come from D20 game mechanics. This is problematic.
Just paying attention to the production cost system reveals how it's actually silly and impossible to use as a reference.

That's stating the obvious, and has absolutely no bearing on this debate whatsoever.

It's a debate about industrial might now. It is relevant.
You can also look at your replies before I was banned, and see how you were unflinchingly against the mere idea that the Empire couldn't exploit its Death Star building capacity to build starships with little efforts.
Since then, you have been able to read quotes that show how an unique design considerably lengthens production, and how the lack of standardization would preclude the use of the tools and building facilities for the construction of more mundane elements such as SDs. That, because of the modules which could either end inside an ISD or inside the Death Star, only the crust really was close to the stuff of an ISD, with its surface sections, hangar, command bridges, turrets and other rooms, corridors and personnel facilities.
As I said earlier in my post, and as it's confirmed by text in several sources, the Death Star was that big because it simply couldn't be smaller in order to power its main systems, weapon included. All these main systems are simply complete stand alone systems which can't be built with modules or recycled into warships.

No one is calling for the production of new ship classes.

Never said that. But the point is interesting in light of the Death Star, as I said.

The production base for the Imperial fleet is already extant, and need not be reinvented. Heck, they could simply duplicate it if they wished.

Production facilities have to be built to meet the ship's production requirements. While we're not dealing with the introduction of a new class of starship, the point is all the more relevant in light of the construction of the Death Star. Namely that what they'd use to build the Death Star would be specifically tailored for the construction of that station. Period.

Yeah, that's also fully in line with real life. Jesus Christ, go read up about what causes the numerous cost overruns for the R&D of new weapons. And again, I fail to see what this has to do with anything? Is someone proposing design revisions to the ISD?

Where in the piece you quoted is there any mention of a revision?
That's just a way to dismiss the point about the cost of Rebel attacks. The Rebellion Era Sourcebook clearly establishes that the galaxy was at war after Yavin. Rebels were attacking plenty of convoys, ships and bases, destroying or capturing them (generally to loot them to the bone, in conjunction with other sources).

LOL, what? What does this change about the Death Stars, both of which were built in secret? Nothing can 'fly in their face', I'm afraid, now or ever- what difference do some incomprehensible flowery language about mere budget office disputes - the context of which we know nothing - make to anything, especially in the context of this thread and the utter insignificance of the Empire's opponent?

So that's it? "LOL"
A quote says it rather clearly that the mere introduction of a new class of starship nearly brought the Empire to its knees and all you can find is "LOL"?
I'm sorry but LOL is not an argument.
You try to brush that away with some vague allusion to a "context" -- like if a strong Empire would be waived by a "context"... you'd expect that from rotten institutions asking to crumble. Not from the Oh Glorious Empire.

And yeah, I know KDY wasn't just builidng ISDs, just like the Mon Calamari shipyards weren't just building star cruisers. It's called making a comparison for the purposes of argument. And try to recall KDY is one shipyard out of hundreds, and that contrary to your claim, it was not, and never was, the sole producer of Star Destroyers.

You have some reading comprehensions issues. I didn't claim KDY was the sole purveyor of ISDs. But it is indisputably clear that it's the main one, by far, as confirmed by the RESB.
Also, show me evidence of the hundreds of other shipyards building ISDs, and give me production times.

I also fail to see what KDY's status as a private company has to do with anything at all.

A private company requires more money than is solely needed to nourish its workers. It exists to make money first. A nationalized company that doesn't sell its ships to other nations doesn't care about sales as its main objective, although it could convene of a price if a private buyer would be eying a few combat ships.
What we see is that the main provider of ISDs wasn't controlled by the Empire, and monetary gain is always a wrench into any model that tries being efficient, largely because of added value.

What, do you think as a private business with the infrastructure to build large warships, the only customer of which is the GE, it will refuse the contracts

I don't recally saying that. But the Empire will have to pay an added value.

Where did you get the impression that anyone was saying they'd be using a single slipway? Using multiple slipways to build large warships is the normal state of affairs.

So their first ISD was finished over several years, while using multiple slipways. Got that.

And ... so?

An Empire that could easily build a Death Star without scratching the bottom of the barrel wouldn't be so anal on the budget line. 50 millions when a trivial change already rates in billions, that's actually fucking super-anal.
But it totally fits with the idea that the introduction of an entire new class of warship threatened the stability of the Empire.

Oh don't be obtuse. Whole star systems? Where? The Core? Mid Rim? Outer Rim? Uselessly vague.

Mid/Outer Rim all you want, it doesn't matter. The point is about the importance of such a ship, monetary wise. It's also relative to the region. While a Core World may raise an eyebrow, a Moff over a Mid or Outer Rim sector will be at pain by merely looking at the cost of those Rebel attacks, especially since it is where they occur the most anyway.
And again, the example I gave above only concerned the loss of hundreds of metric tons of goods from Imperial cargos. That's a small loss, volume wise, yet expensive. The Rebels are known for destroying entire warships btw.

You know, quotes would help- your habit of airily summarizing events as opposed to quoting it exhaustively only when pressed doesn't inspire confidence in what you think happened - for some reason I hardly think it was "three heavy cruisers defeated 24 ISDs", or "it was the fleet of the entire sector", never mind what the "second victory" is.

It is said that the Oplovis Fleet was drubbed by a line of battle from the Alliance Fleet (RASB, p.39, 2nd Ed.).
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Yuvern
Then many months later, the Oplovis Fleet came out of hyperspace and was attacked by a battle line of three Alliance cruisers, in the Atrivis system.

Not that this changes an iota of my argument in any event - tactical successes do not change the strategic balance.

Yeah, whatever. It's not like an entire strategy or campaign would be rewritten over the loss of a single battle.
Wait!

Anyway, the strategic balance is largely described in "Geonosis and the outer rim worlds". It is only a question of time until you just acknowledge the present fact.

"Where's the superindustry"? Errrr - artificial planetoid with the big freaking laser staring you in the face. Now you're just being silly - you think they're cannibalizing tranceivers because they can't build new ones?

Somehow, yes.
See more reasons below.

Can you say non-sequitur? They're doing so to place the Holonet under direct control of the military, and out of private hands- especially the Rebellion. It's only right there in the quote, after all ...

No. The quote literally says they're going to cram those into ships and into the Imperial palace. When you want to take control of private holdings and put them into the hands of a despotic military government, you do what KDY feared, you nationalize assets, and eventually put people in place (in this case, since we're talking about mechanical parts, you put filters, securities and protocols).
You don't "cannibalize" a network.
The Rebellion Era Sourcebook tells that the Empire chose restrict Holonet to Imperial use (p.11). Although it is not guarantee that most transceivers were left in place, it would suggest that the Empire actually made the effort to build transceivers for each of its warships, at least the ISDs and SSDs.
But the cannibalization is actually confirmed in the RESB:

Originally Posted by Rebellion Era Sourcebook, p.70

Struggle for the Holonet

In the early days of the Empire, many transceivers that had been in civilian hands were seized and installed in the growing fleet of Star Destroyers. AS the New Order expanded, laws were passed restricting access to the Holonet except for military functions.

You may think it's only relevant to military information and propaganda, but have you considered the importance of communications for financial markets?
The galactic standard credit was used all over the Empire, even by the Rebels.
However, it is impossible to coordinate proper sales and transfer in stock holdings like we have today, at the speed we do today, with the difference that it occurs between between planets, when your communication infrastructure as been reduced to the equivalent of horse riding messengers and pigeon couriers.
The Emperor was ready to cripple all the exchanges (information blackout) between its worlds outside of the Core to control them.

Note that "in the early days" would actually fit with the letter sent by Tarkin before the Death Star project was started (WEG's Death Star book), regardless of when the Death Star project was started during the Empire's Rise.

Nevermind you think simply because the Empire has a mindbogglingly massive industrial capability must mean they're really into waste and duplicating effort, as opposed to recycling, lol.

Yes, as much as a government would decide to recycle all the tar and bridges to build large motorways that would only link its military bases and headquarters, leaving civilians to drive on dry mud and be stuck at a river.
The Empire couldn't live without the capitalism that permeated throughout its entire economy. It had nationalized some companies just like it used a lot of private contractors, and taxed worlds which needed a good economy to produce enough GDP to be taxed.
That said, with what would happen with a crippled Holonet network outside of the Core, you're literally breaking one of the pillars of economies used to rely on interplanetary communications for eons.
You cannot adapt and reform your economy all of sudden after such a seizure, literally.
It was not suggested to leave the transceivers and declaring them Imperial property, and modifying them so they can only be used by the Empire. That would have been tolerable to entire systems that depended upon those transceivers.
Tarkin was literally saying that the transceivers had to be removed in order to be placed into major warships. No matter what the long term plan was, the direct consequence could be measured.

It never ceases to amaze that you think you can refute the Empire's indisputable, crushing advantage in war industry with insignificant little factoids that wouldn't even rate a footnote in Appendix B, Page 9, Sub-Section 3 of the Imperial ledger book. You clearly have no sense of scale. The "superindustry" of the galaxy was established in ANH, then reinforced with a sledgehammer in RotJ.

Yet those "details" come from sources which we are supposed to take canonically.
Should we change standards now?

As for the industry, making two special space balls in the middle ass of nowhere, while we don't know how much money and resources they taxed (we also know that Tarkin diverted funds from at least two departments, one being the Public Works department as I recall), and if it meant people would be burdened to no ends by impossible levels of taxation... to the point it would be detrimental to the economy and lower the number of sources of taxation. And you don't need to look far away to get a rather solid example.


That and the fact that the crew of the Death Star wasn't huge. Leaving side the stormies, you have crews of 20~30K for an ISD. The Death Star's crew (not the stormtroopers) counted half a million.

Originally Posted by Leo1

It's not necessary for me to claim that at all. Further, building the Death Star was an Imperial objective from before ANH. It's destruction wouldn't have changed anything. We don't know when construction of the second began, AFAIK (definitely not immediately) but it would have been part of Imperial calculus for years.

Interesting. Would you suggest that the Empire pilled up money and resources in order to accelerate the construction of the second Death Star when time would come, or just in case the first one would be destroyed or lost?

This is not an invitation to argue about the silly idea that the Emperor was letting the Rebels win, btw.

[Leo1]

Originally Posted by Mr. Oragahn

What you're saying has little relevance to the point I made.

Sure it does.

Eventually, if that was true, the fact is that they didn't do it. Executor, for one, was assigned to the defense of the DSII, plus some other ISDs. Actually, as someone pointed out before, probably evilauthor, remove the Endor defense fleet from the armada present at Endor to crush the Rebels, and you'd suddenly not find yourself with such a margin to destroy Rebel worlds.

Er, what? The Rebel defences at Mon Calamari were totally insufficient to withstand the fleet at Endor, with or without Executor. That they didn't only demonstrates that for whatever reason, they didn't find it a concern. The Battle of Tingel Deepspace Besh is even more damning. See later post.

The Rebellion Era Sourcebook (a D20 RPG source that largely focuses on the rise of the Rebellion and the years after the Battle of Yavin) clearly establishes that shit blew into the Empire's face as the Rebels won at Yavin, and the Empire had to deploy fleet to hunt them and become indistinctly brutal against its own worlds:

1. Here goes the idea that the Empire wasn't a lid on a boiling pot. It's confirmed by the statistic that the Avenger had a track record of 483 planetary suppressions alone (WEG).
2. The "mightiest fleet" bit is a direct pick from the WEG book. Obviously, the Executor counted a lot in that.

Again, so what? What does this change about Endor? Nothing.

"Incapable" alone is not my argument, nor what the book says.
Incapable of doing it without losing ground against Rebel attacks in the rest of the GE's territories, THAT is what the book says, quite clearly.
It's supported by the quotes above.

To you I say the same as what I said to Mith, I'm not having this argument twice.

The Empire could only use a fraction of the armada seen at Endor.

No reason to believe that at all. It's at Endor, it could go anywhere else as well.

You also have to consider the size of the fleets the Empire could mobilize to hunt the Rebels. Examples: Task Force Vengeance and Death Squadron.
The Rebels have largely proved to be able to take down an Executor, and have also largely proved to defeat large imperial forces, or even survive against impossible odds, no matter the amount of ISDs.

What a load of bullshit. If the Rebels were so able to fight the Imperial fleet in head to head battle, including Super Star Destroyers, care to explain how they were chased across the galaxy and the disasters they suffered? This is merely cherry picking and talking up Rebel successes whilst ignoring their stated tactics because it was well known they couldn't fight head to head, hence why they didn't.

Claiming it's nonsense or indisputable is meaningless.
I asked you for clarification, not for you to tell me it's all in Dark Empire.
So again, when did those fleets of ships disappear exactly, and how many ships is that?

Give me ALL the facts you alluded to.
If you don't have the solid evidence, drop the claim.

No, it's quite meaningful. We know from DESB everything we need to. The burden of proof is on you to argue against the situation DESB paints, not me to offer you ever more detail because you aren't personally satisfied and think your position is the default.

Does it speak of a carnage that would explain, clearly, the scope of battles post-ROTJ, compared to your claims of super industry and gazillion ships which could all be crewed?

What about the fact that super mighty KDY was still working for the Empire after ROTJ?

So what if it was? The Imperial Remnant didn't have either the tax revenues or cohesion between its various squabbling warlords to take advantage.

I never pretended all was going well. That's precisely why I alluded to very low percentages of the former industrial might. But I'm convinced that I was not being obtuse in asking for the evidence of 1% of that might which you consider could easily be swapped between Death Star construction and ship building. 1% isn't excessive nor abusive in terms of request, and frankly it would be kinda silly to claim lower remainders without solid evidence that the Empire was totally crippled.

Remember, pages ago, you claimed a super industry that enabled the Empire to build a Death Star at ease practically anywhere it wanted to, without major concessions to make, and that this industrial might could easily be recycled into a traditional ship building force, for some insane warship production capability. You know, when you equaled the Death Star volume to a given number of ISDs, which turned out to be in the tens or hundreds of millions of ISDs.

Oh, you mean where you strawmanned the shit out of what I said so that I wasn't making a comparison to indicate industrial capability, but actually claiming they could build hundreds of millions of ISDs?

Show me evidence that the Empire and its thousand sectors was so fragmented that it couldn't even come with a thousandth of its might after the death of the Emperor, and that the Death Star's construction was so modular in fact that one could stop it at anytime and turn the construction sources of a totally new and unique large station into ship building factories.

I have shown the evidence. The Essential Atlas, and Dark Empire Sourcebook. They're quite detailed in what happened. Your incredulity and simply asking for more and more detail because you aren't personally satisfied is not an argument, it is a delay tactic.

Remember that even the Rebellion Era sourcebook says that the shipyard construction schemes of KDY and other contractors relied on modularity (which also supposedly helped mask the Death Star's construction under bureaucracy, although it's clear that an absurdly vast amount of the Death Star was so unique that pieces that could fit on an ISD could not fit on a Death Star safe into the crust structure, if only for the fact that the size of the station was dictated by the required power core needed to feed all the main systems). So with this ability to move any part built anywhere to assemble them together into one place, it would obviously take little effort for Zsinj, for example, to have the bureaucratic hand of his structure to reorganize the work force. After all, the private contractors are all over the place, the shipyards exist in the hundred, and construction was modular and flexible. Even with losing 99% of the industry his territory previously held, he'd still be more than able to come with better than what he came with, if you were correct.
Even a single sector would contain enough subsectors, themselves containing several star systems, to provide all the raw materials and population to get those mighty ships flying out of docks in short order and properly crewed, when going with hypothetical numbers like you do. That said, although ore could come from anywhere, in relatively any system, the experience and academical training centers were not there.

At no point have you justified a single whit of your assumptions about the forces of Warlord Zsinj - or any other Imperial satrap, by reference to any evidence. Instead you refer to some minor raid to steal an SSD from Kuat and think this establishes the size of his forces, their commitment elsewhere both defending his territory and any conflicts with his neighbors, the available budget, etc.

Justify your horde of assumptions, then we'll talk.

Until then, I'll be over here, sitting on the Death Star and every other source which demonstrates how completely wrong you are.

As I said way before, the point is that the Emperor could not have both the Death Star and the millions of ISDs. It was a dilemma. Yes, the Empire could have had thousands more shipyards instead of building a Death Star. Hell, considering that it was about duplicating already existing assets, it would have probably been far cheaper than building a Death Star, and faster as well.
But then the other problem remains the same: crews, and the total crew of the DS is nothing to brag about.

At what point did you convince yourself that the DS has a small crew (as opposed to population, mind) is because of a crew shortage, exactly? The Empire rules a hundred quadrillion beings, with humans making up the majority of the populace (Essential Atlas).

You want to assert a crew shortage in face of that fact? Prove it.

And I see you're still beating that asinine millions of ISDs strawman, no matter how many times I've rejected it.

That said, with StoG, it has become clear that most of the Empire's ships came from a very few points, and we're yet to see evidence that those few points could, alone, have the ship outputs you claim.

The canon evidence I've presented speaks for itself. It ain't my problem if you don't read it before you post.

I said it was the Death Star OR the numerous ships, and I said that Empire couldn't even crew them anyway. You're still ought to prove that the Empire could have both, with appropriate crew numbers.

Wrong. You want to claim a crew shortage, you prove it.

I also have that piece from the Technical Journal:

I left the reference about the firepower out (don't insist, it mentions a fusion reactor, just like in the Rebellion Era Sourcebook).
I'm not sure if this still fits with the Death Star history because it's become quite a mess at LFL about that, between the prototype, Horuz, Maw and the superlaser moved from one place to another. But we have a clear statement that the Death Star literally drained most of the Empire for two years at some point, most likely at the beginning. But nothing says it doesn't fit either.

One word:- Vague.

That's for the industry.

There's also the ships which already existed, the present fleets.
You got a couple examples of some Moffs not taking orders from Coruscant anymore.
Your piece of text even says, right there, that Moffs were encouraged to be independent to a large degree. Funny is it, that their independence wouldn't allow them to muster those large fleets you're talking about, but of which we see little to nothing. I mean, even give me a single large engagement between two warlords and that would be the beginning of something, at least.

"A couple of examples". Yeah, that's one way to put it. Why don't you actually try and prove something, for a change? I'm tired of your appeals to incredulity.

KDY still remained under control of the Empire post-Endor, which itsalf still was in control of many sectors, which were all the more sources of raw material to feed the hungry KDY with those billions of tons of material.
You try to ignore the fact Zsinj, who controlled 1/3 of the Empire, had to rely on pirates to complement the small task force he was able to send to KDY (7.5 ABY), in order to destroy the one Executor-class they were building that would threaten his own power base.
1/3 of the Empire. That would be what? More than 300,000 star systems.

Who cares? Zsinj was attacking both the New Republic and the Remnant at this point, had to defend his territory - so what if he hired pirates to assist as a distraction in what was simply a mere raid?

That, and the Rebellion, when it turned to the New Republic in its very early days, around the Thrawn/Remnant era, was at the helm 3/4 of known territories. Yet, fleet production was far from stellar, and I don't even know if it got any better even when most people were united against the Yuuzhan Vong.

Why don't you actually present some evidence?

And how does this prove the destruction of the dormant industrial might?

I'm sorry, can you not read? Fiscal crises ring a bell? Futile attempts to streamline spending? Chaos, surrenders, declarations of independence, onward march of the NR?

When a leader want things done, it can be done very fast. Industries don't vanish into subspace because of a crisis or lack of cohesion or proper orders. Shipyards do not get snuffed out of reality, and I very doubt that freighters responsible of shipping raw materials and modules for Imperial ships stopped existing as well.
When a powerful and charismatic man such as Zsinj, much more than Pestage, returns with control over 1/3 of the Empire, yet can't get a large fleet, it's obvious that on the average, the Empire wasn't that flexible at all. That and the references about how its Navy comprised many old warships, including old Star Destroyers.

At no point have you either:-

a. Demonstrated the size of Zsinj's fleet;
b. Come up with a reason for that size that supports your argument rather than mine (i.e. conflict, security in his own territory); and
c. Responded at all to what the DESB says. It flat out states the Remnant was in fiscal crisis. That the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing without Palpatine there to keep it together. It speaks for itself.

In light of this, you can insist I'm wrong despite what the DESB says until the cows come home. Your just stamping your feet and going "well Zsinj could've done this" is not an argument.

There's also another thing to point out here, in that D6 stuff and D20 would either be extremely similar (D20 books copying entire pans of D6 material), or might seem to disagree on the scale of things, notably the industrial might of BOTH the Rebellion AND the Empire.
That, and I gave a quick look at the Dark Empire SB, and from the pages you quoted, there's no worthwhile reference to Isaard or Zsinj before the arrival(/return) of Thrawn, which is more than odd considering what both former figures achieved post-Endor.

Probably because they didn't actually achieve anything of consequence whatsoever.

Then "after Thrawn's success", indeed. Or... all after Thrawn's death, 9 ABY.
Way to miss the point, in other terms.
Clue: Pestage, Zsinj and Isaard all predate this, and so do all the cases I pointed at.

Garbage. You're still trying to sell some basis fantasy of a unified Empire after Endor, and it just wasn't so.

Again, the Mutiny postdates the cases under scrutiny.

Irrelevant. Warlordism, the cultivation of individual satrapies and interests, isolationism and the onward advance of the New Republic, stealing both their worlds and their money, is well established.

You go on and on about industrial capacity but miss the point about the cash with which to buy. You do this with the Mon Calamari too.

You are indisputably correct in your error about the relevance of certain events in the Empire's history.

Afraid not.

Somehow you are right about the first, but hypocritical about the second methinks. KDY can build 8.6715 more than Mon Cal going by those numbers, assuming a Mon Cal takes 640 weeks to build in a single slip as well (that despite being smaller). The Mon Cal less efficient multiplier takes care of the "artsy" thing.

WTF? No. Mon Calamari has only 1,000 slips. With 12 slips per cruiser they could only manage a fraction of what Kuat did at full capacity. What the hell are you talking about?

Yet you continue to claim that Mon Cal yards can't produce enough ships to threaten the Empire, despite the second having much more territory to defend, which actually gives the Rebels an impressive higher and mobile concentration of heavy cruisers at their disposal.

LOL. Yeah, because the Mon Calamari / Rebellion had an unlimited budget to both build and maintain and endless production run of Star Cruisers, am I right?

Oh - wait. They're poor as hell and isolated. Problem solved.

OK. And about how many ships per year for those shipyards?

Enough to eventually sustain a fleet crew of trillions, I'd imagine.

We know Fondor shipyards built a SSD, but schedule was hard to keep in sight due to revolts after the Imperial defeat at Yavin. Another reason why the Rebellion was not irrelevant.

Please stop trying to segue from 'MC80s are not a strategic threat' to 'the Rebellion was irrelevant'. No one said the Rebellion was irrelevant.

No, it's a general statement about development AND production.

No it isn't. The evidence is quite clear that building large ships like ISDs and MC80s doesn't take 'years', ergo your interpretation is wrong.

Let's also consider the possibility that WotC's figures point to faster building rates than WEG's.
That said, the x ships/shipyard numbers seem to solely come from D20 game mechanics. This is problematic.
Just paying attention to the production cost system reveals how it's actually silly and impossible to use as a reference.

Its not problematic at all. Its entirely consistent with Agents of Chaos, The Force Unleashed Novel, and the speed with which the Mon Calamari can build a cruiser.

It's a debate about industrial might now. It is relevant.
You can also look at your replies before I was banned, and see how you were unflinchingly against the mere idea that the Empire couldn't exploit its Death Star building capacity to build starships with little efforts.

Of course I was. That didn't mean I was literally proposing a one-for-one substitute by volume, as you tried to strawman.

Since then, you have been able to read quotes that show how an unique design considerably lengthens production

Which hurts you, not helps you. Obviously.

and how the lack of standardization would preclude the use of the tools and building facilities for the construction of more mundane elements such as SDs. That, because of the modules which could either end inside an ISD or inside the Death Star, only the crust really was close to the stuff of an ISD, with its surface sections, hangar, command bridges, turrets and other rooms, corridors and personnel facilities.
As I said earlier in my post, and as it's confirmed by text in several sources, the Death Star was that big because it simply couldn't be smaller in order to power its main systems, weapon included. All these main systems are simply complete stand alone systems which can't be built with modules or recycled into warships.

At what point did you get the idea that this is about literally using whatever built the Death Star to build ISDs, as opposed to the industrial base that made the Death Star possible? The Raxus Prime shipyard had already nearly completed an ISD in a matter of six months, when six months before that the shipyard didn't even exist. Think about that for a moment.

Heck, leaving that aside, it's actually a fact that the existing industrial base was instrumental in the construction of the Death Star - re: standardization, you're pretty much saying the exact opposite of what the Rebellion Era Sourcebook notes:-

Originally Posted by p. 44

If not for the standardization of components and training methods it had brought about, the logistical problems involved with designing the Death Star would have been nearly insurmountable. The fact that any manufacturing facility across the Outer Rim could contribute components both helped speed and conceal the construction of the superweapon - who would notice if Wroona Stardocks was producing five or six Star Destroyer main bridge components this month?

So where exactly do you get off with this claim that the Death Star is non-standardized and totally different from everything, again? Oh, that's right, you totally made it up in direct contradiction to the WotC RESB. The existing industrial base is explicitly stated to be quite useful to the construction of the first Death Star, sorry. The reactor and superlaser would be new designs, but they make up only part of the Death Star's massive bulk, as anyone can tell when looking at its cross-section.

In sum, the RESB is actually quite clear on how valuable standardisation was to its design and construction, despite your attempts in this post to belittle same with naked assertions as to the exact opposite being 'quite clear' based on your baseless personal biases and not a shred of evidence to be seen anywhere.

It really is funny how you can appeal to a source saying the exact opposite of what you want and think you won't get called on it ...

Production facilities have to be built to meet the ship's production requirements. While we're not dealing with the introduction of a new class of starship, the point is all the more relevant in light of the construction of the Death Star. Namely that what they'd use to build the Death Star would be specifically tailored for the construction of that station. Period.

That's got nothing to do with anything. The massive industrial base to build the Death Star could just as easily be turned towards building starships- i.e. both the existing manufacturing network and shipyard expansion, as we saw on Raxus Prime. It's simply a question of application.

Like I've said in the past, your idea that the knowledge, capacity and industrial base for the Death Star could just appear overnight with no prior reason for existing is mind-bogglingly naive - and expressly contradicted by the relevant sources.

Where in the piece you quoted is there any mention of a revision?

Uhhh - it's right there in your quote.

That's just a way to dismiss the point about the cost of Rebel attacks. The Rebellion Era Sourcebook clearly establishes that the galaxy was at war after Yavin. Rebels were attacking plenty of convoys, ships and bases, destroying or capturing them (generally to loot them to the bone, in conjunction with other sources).

So what? You're not proving anything here.

So that's it? "LOL"
A quote says it rather clearly that the mere introduction of a new class of starship nearly brought the Empire to its knees and all you can find is "LOL"?
I'm sorry but LOL is not an argument.
You try to brush that away with some vague allusion to a "context" -- like if a strong Empire would be waived by a "context"... you'd expect that from rotten institutions asking to crumble. Not from the Oh Glorious Empire.

Yeah, I do brush it away, because your idea is ridiculous. How did it 'almost destroy the Empire'? Did the separate budget committees take up arms and go off to their respective territories and threaten to declare war over the introduction of a new starship?

Funny, how could the Death Stars possibly be built in secret when you think a new ISD was going to literally destroy the Empire

It's an obvious figure of speech- vociferous arguments between lobbies in the government, nothing more.

You have some reading comprehensions issues. I didn't claim KDY was the sole purveyor of ISDs. But it is indisputably clear that it's the main one, by far, as confirmed by the RESB. Also, show me evidence of the hundreds of other shipyards building ISDs, and give me production times.

Why on Earth do I need to do that, pray tell? Even a brand new shipyard at Raxus Prime could build a new ISD in less than six months, straight from the start.

This is just pathetic nitpicking.

A private company requires more money than is solely needed to nourish its workers. It exists to make money first. A nationalized company that doesn't sell its ships to other nations doesn't care about sales as its main objective, although it could convene of a price if a private buyer would be eying a few combat ships.
What we see is that the main provider of ISDs wasn't controlled by the Empire, and monetary gain is always a wrench into any model that tries being efficient, largely because of added value.

I don't recally saying that. But the Empire will have to pay an added value.

Whoopdeedoo. And this has what to do with anything, again?

So their first ISD was finished over several years, while using multiple slipways. Got that.

Maybe. I have no idea. It means nothing, given we know how fast they build ISDs, no matter how much you don't like it.

An Empire that could easily build a Death Star without scratching the bottom of the barrel wouldn't be so anal on the budget line.

Who says, you? That's nice. I'll keep that in mind, its impossible for a bureaucrat to save money by reusing perfectly good weapons systems (if that's even the motivation, I like how you just keep saying shit without any quotes and expect me to take you at your word, by the way, really is fantastic and holding up your end of an argument) because the whole Empire has a huge treasury.

Mid/Outer Rim all you want, it doesn't matter. The point is about the importance of such a ship, monetary wise. It's also relative to the region. While a Core World may raise an eyebrow, a Moff over a Mid or Outer Rim sector will be at pain by merely looking at the cost of those Rebel attacks, especially since it is where they occur the most anyway.
And again, the example I gave above only concerned the loss of hundreds of metric tons of goods from Imperial cargos. That's a small loss, volume wise, yet expensive. The Rebels are known for destroying entire warships btw.

It does matter, actually. The Outer Rim is a hole.

It is said that the Oplovis Fleet was drubbed by a line of battle from the Alliance Fleet (RASB, p.39, 2nd Ed.).
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Yuvern
Then many months later, the Oplovis Fleet came out of hyperspace and was attacked by a battle line of three Alliance cruisers, in the Atrivis system.

And you got the idea this must be an entire Sector Fleet from ... where?

Yeah, whatever. It's not like an entire strategy or campaign would be rewritten over the loss of a single battle.
Wait!

Not normally, no. At all.

Anyway, the strategic balance is largely described in "Geonosis and the outer rim worlds". It is only a question of time until you just acknowledge the present fact.

Not really.

Somehow, yes.

No. The quote literally says they're going to cram those into ships and into the Imperial palace. When you want to take control of private holdings and put them into the hands of a despotic military government, you do what KDY feared, you nationalize assets, and eventually put people in place (in this case, since we're talking about mechanical parts, you put filters, securities and protocols).
You don't "cannibalize" a network.

Who says, you? That's nice.

The Rebellion Era Sourcebook tells that the Empire chose restrict Holonet to Imperial use (p.11). Although it is not guarantee that most transceivers were left in place, it would suggest that the Empire actually made the effort to build transceivers for each of its warships, at least the ISDs and SSDs.
But the cannibalization is actually confirmed in the RESB:

You may think it's only relevant to military information and propaganda, but have you considered the importance of communications for financial markets?
The galactic standard credit was used all over the Empire, even by the Rebels.
However, it is impossible to coordinate proper sales and transfer in stock holdings like we have today, at the speed we do today, with the difference that it occurs between between planets, when your communication infrastructure as been reduced to the equivalent of horse riding messengers and pigeon couriers.
The Emperor was ready to cripple all the exchanges (information blackout) between its worlds outside of the Core to control them.

Note that "in the early days" would actually fit with the letter sent by Tarkin before the Death Star project was started (WEG's Death Star book), regardless of when the Death Star project was started during the Empire's Rise.

What a steaming load. You went on for paragraph after paragraph and somehow spectacularly failed to miss the point, even though you're literally quoting it.

The Empire is placing the Holonet on their ships to stop the Rebellion from doing the same, and to restrict civilian access. By definition, that requires the seizure of the Holonet. That is the reason for its cannibalization, and you have presented no evidence for another.

No more, no less. If you want to argue that the Empire must be incapable of producing new transceivers, why don't you actually come up with some real evidence for it, as opposed to spinning a line of verbal diarrhea that just assumes it as fact?

Yes, as much as a government would decide to recycle all the tar and bridges to build large motorways that would only link its military bases and headquarters, leaving civilians to drive on dry mud and be stuck at a river.

Wow, what a spectacularly awful analogy. Brilliant, just bravo! Oh wait:-

The Empire couldn't live without the capitalism that permeated throughout its entire economy. It had nationalized some companies just like it used a lot of private contractors, and taxed worlds which needed a good economy to produce enough GDP to be taxed.
That said, with what would happen with a crippled Holonet network outside of the Core, you're literally breaking one of the pillars of economies used to rely on interplanetary communications for eons.
You cannot adapt and reform your economy all of sudden after such a seizure, literally.
It was not suggested to leave the transceivers and declaring them Imperial property, and modifying them so they can only be used by the Empire. That would have been tolerable to entire systems that depended upon those transceivers.
Tarkin was literally saying that the transceivers had to be removed in order to be placed into major warships. No matter what the long term plan was, the direct consequence could be measured.

A steaming load with not a shred of canon evidence to support it. This is just pitiful - there is no evidence whatsoever that Imperial seizure of the Holonet inflicted any damage on the galactic economy, and even if it did, this has absolutely nothing to do with this argument whatsoever.

We've devolved into what is basically the equivalent of you playing with yourself in public. I have no interest in your fanfic. And nor does the Databank:-

To ensure control over the populace, the Empire dismantled the galaxy-spanning HoloNet. With this public forum of information exchange now in the hands of the military, the Emperor was able to funnel the immense taxation revenue required to keep the HoloNet active into building his war machine. Furthermore, Imperial control of free information ensured that only the New Order agenda propagated throughout the galaxy, and dissenting voices were all but silenced.

Immense corporations aided and abetted the Empire's rise, in exchange for unprecedented freedom of operation. Many of these companies were nationalized -- Imperialized -- in the process, resulting in a huge influx of capital resources for the Empire.

The Holonet seizure created a net increase in taxation revenue, not a decrease. It's also amusing you take up the most glaringly silly and counter intuitive interpretation of the evidence possible (like your My Little First Separatist Death Star) - what, all of a sudden the financial markets couldn't function because the Empire seized control of the Holonet? You don't think the GE and the corporations which back it have a vested interest in getting that information, and the GE would supply it?

Yet those "details" come from sources which we are supposed to take canonically.
Should we change standards now?

You must've missed how the problem is your spinning entire lines of complete and total bullshit with no canon support from said factoids, as opposed to the factoids themselves.

As for the industry, making two special space balls in the middle ass of nowhere, while we don't know how much money and resources they taxed (we also know that Tarkin diverted funds from at least two departments, one being the Public Works department as I recall), and if it meant people would be burdened to no ends by impossible levels of taxation... to the point it would be detrimental to the economy and lower the number of sources of taxation. And you don't need to look far away to get a rather solid example.

You're welcome to prevent some evidence - any evidence - for your numerous assertions in this regard. AFAIK, there is absolutely none, so I'm not surprised you think sheer amount of no-evidence verbage will substitute.

That and the fact that the crew of the Death Star wasn't huge. Leaving side the stormies, you have crews of 20~30K for an ISD. The Death Star's crew (not the stormtroopers) counted half a million.

Which has nothing to do with anything. Oh, and crew != population.

Interesting. Would you suggest that the Empire pilled up money and resources in order to accelerate the construction of the second Death Star when time would come, or just in case the first one would be destroyed or lost?

Neither. They lost the first, started building the second sometime after. Read the RotJ opening crawl. The mere fact that they could afford to build a second Death Star which was both larger and more powerful than the first (and which fixed the original design flaw) amply demonstrates their capability and that the original was not its limit.

[Ironanvil1]

Incidentally the ISB mentions that the resources put into the Death Star could have produced 20 Sector Groups - 480 ISD's and 48,000 support ships.

[Mith]

Originally Posted by Leo1

Twaddle. Its on screen. If you want to argue its a mistake, you prove it.

Actually, you're right. I realized the problem.

It's an especially asinine claim to try and make when your "NCC numbers are sequential" argument is entirely invented in the first place.

Excuse me?

Valiant NCC-74210
Launched in 2372

USS Defiant NX-74205
Was built in 2366, but was never approved due to power issues and retreating Borg threat. Comissioned in 2371.

Originally Posted by Admiral Vice

Dude, I'm sorry, but that's just a lame argument to try to put forward. There are no hard or soft canon when it comes to Star Trek. There are no levels of canon at all. Everything we see on screen is considered canon. If there's a VFX error, the onus is on you to show the errors.

And really, this thread is just sad. I'm not a Warsie, far from it. In most SW vs. X debates, I generally support arguments proposed by l33tleboy or Mr. Oragahn. But the levels of incoherence and mental gymnastics which some are willing to stoop to in this thread in an effort to have their fav verse win is mind boggling.

Allow me to correct it. The Defiant was built in 2366, but she was comissioned in 2371. What likely happened was that Starfleet stripped her either of her former registry and gave it to another ship (because the project was shelved) and given a new one or she never had one to begin with. Afterwards, after seeing the Defiant was back in working progess, Starfleet probably started building new ones, but the production was slower since their shipyards hadn't put the class into mass production yet.

[Leo1]

Excuse me?

Valiant NCC-74210
Launched in 2372

USS Defiant NX-74205
Was built in 2366, but was never approved due to power issues and retreating Borg threat. Comissioned in 2371.

Yes, and? I know this. How many times do I have to say it, just because registration numbers go higher does not mean that NCC-74210 was the 74,210th ship ever commissioned by the UFP. That's a completely unjustified assumption, and will remain so until you present some evidence otherwise. Each number in the sequence could mean something entirely different.

[General Schatten]

I fail to see how the Avenger's track record, one of the ships of Vader's personal fleet that he utilizes to hunt down Skywalker and by consequence the Rebellion, has anything to do with the rest of the Empire. Death Squadron is obviously part of the reserves Leo is talking about since it isn't attached to any specific sector command.

But let's play, 1/80th of 71.7 million is 896,250. Dividing by the number of years the Empire has been in power gets you 35850 planetary revolts a year. Considering Vader's made it his personal business to hunt down Luke I can understand why out of 215100 revolts in six years the Avenger would be involved in four hundred and something odd of them.