Star Wars - The Essential Guide to Warfare official comments and observations

I like that there was a breakdown that showed what they were good at- some were political. Some were appointed for their skill at naval R&D (Zaarin. Who was also a reasonably skilled tactician). Some were really good commanders.

Even if it's scaled up a bit beyond the obvious addons, it's not majorly bigger. Maybe battlecruiser, not dreadnaught.

Wait, had to find the actual quote.

The others were political appointments, basically. Some were renowned for as military scientists, such as Zaarin (who Thrawn replaced). And many admirals who were not chosen as Grand Admirals could have rivalled the other appointees with ease.

Huh, I just noticed Grant wasn't included in that list. Which is kinda odd, since he was supposedly very good at siege warfare. He certainly wasn't a political appointee, since he was so apolitical that he was the only one to actually survive. He actually wanted to come out of retirement to fight Thrawn.

Grant was a noble. That's probably what made him stand out.
The above four that i mentioned stood out beyond the rest, you might say. No one questioned their appointments to GA rank, but they did most of the others because many could claim they had superior or comparable service records. Ishin-il-Raz and Danetta Pitta were New Order Zealots/High human culture racists....so putting the latter in a position of power secured Palpatine's loyalty to the hardcore extremists.

Declann's appointment was merit-based. His merit being that he was Force-sensitive and learned the art of battle meditation.

Well the entire Grand Admiral move WAS a political one of the highest order. They were Palpitines shotguns/troubleshooters that stood outside the chain of command, answering only to him and equipped with whatever forces/roles/resources Palpy saw fit to give them for any specific task.

Ok, I actually read the section in question, and can update some of the errors I made.

It started out with Lusankya vs Reaper, of course. Wedge asked the Endurance (carrier's) captain to launch her fighters, which were E-Wings, against the Reaper, but the captain decided to hold them in reserve for a bit due to the fact that the new E-Wings were having mechanical problems that'd limit their endurance, so she wanted to save them for when the shield were weaker and they could pick on pinpoint targets better.


Then the reinforcements jumped in and immediately blew up the Endurance.

The Lusankya's fighters were not depleted like I'd heard, but rather were the only reason it was able to fight it's way free and avoid destruction as well. Wedge was about to order abandon ship when the Rogues made a hole for him in the interdictor screen.

(The wookiepedia page has just been updated on this too)

I always did hate E-Wings. Unreliable since their inception.

E-wings and B-wing are the ugliest, or at least some of the ugliest ships ever,

B-Wings are ugly, but they're great for scavenging weapons from. Under D6 rules they've got this massively powerful laser cannon that all on its own is slightly more powerful than all four of an X-Wing's laser cannons. I played a Verpine Fighter Jock once who built his own custom starfighter which was really little more than a glorified Ugly. It followed the same basic 'shape' of an X-Wing but the fuselage was from a Skipray Blastboat and the S-Foils were from four(!!!) B-Wings that'd had their pilot compartments shot away and were afixed to where the Skipray's wing usually is. The B-Wing's own S-Foils had been removed only the power core, the thrusters, the proton torpedoes, and the gunpod with the laser cannon and single ion cannon being retained.

B-Wings are ugly but I like them. They're weird and they've bombers.

E-Wings, less so. They're ugly in a less interesting way.

The planned next X-wing novel has an E-wing being targeted by an X on the cover

Daniel- that is a pretty large (and dangerous-sounding) Ugly!

Yeah, Skiprays all on their own are 25 meters long and the wing section is about half that in width. B-Wings are just shy of 17 meters long so with the pilot's pod removed we're talking about around 15 meters on either side of what's normally about a ten or twelve meter total wingspan. And then there's the fact that there's four of the junked B-Wing fuselages total... Good thing I saved the power cores and thrusters.

More of a ugly gunship than a fighter, really!

Well, that's what the Blastboat is, is the Star Wars equivalent of an Mi-24 Hind basically. Oh sure, the G-Canon equivalent is the LAAT, but the Skipray was dreamed up nearly a quarter century ago by WEG for the Imperial Sourcebook 1st Edition.

In real life, I think the E-Wing was intended to become new replacement for the X-Wing. Their introduction in Dark Empire certainly reads that way. But the X-Wing is far too iconic, and they damn sure weren't going to release game and book series called "E Wing", so the new fighters never really caught on. I'm hard pressed to even think of other stories where they feature with any prominence.

Maybe if they'd had a better look... the 'engines beneath' thing makes a space fighter look unbalanced.

They're mentioned occasionally. Surprisingly often, really, judging by wookiepedia.

I think the in-universe breakdown is early on they were superior, but prone to breaking down. By the time the problems were ironed out, the XJ fighters had come out and matched their capacity. So they remained in use but never became the top fighter in their role.

IIRC that was the problem with a lot of the New-class ships too; momentum and experience kept Star Cruisers in service even when Nebula- and Republic-class Star Destroyers were coming off the line.

Also, a lot of the older ships were just already-in service, while the more peaceful things were, the less the need for new replacements.

The New Class ended up being a bit small for the job anyway.

I finally got a copy.

There is some indication of technical progress. The war droids of Xim the Despot, based on Rakatan tech, are said to be unmatched in their complexity for "eons." I'm guessing that means until one of the major conflicts in galactic history where we see droids used prominently. Probably the Jedi Civil War or later.

If my reading was correct, blasters indeed fire a bolt of energy derived from a gas, not a portion of gas converted to plasma. "Heat beamers" and another type of weapon that I forget the name of actually fired plasma. "Beam tubes" sound like they might have been like chemical lasers or particle beams.


It's noted that the Pius Dea Crusades has GOT to be a case of the writers going "let's have a Warhammer 40k period in history." The faithful's belief in a monotheistic Goddess makes me wonder if they were actually worshipping (and perhaps instigated) by Abeloth, or perhaps a woefully misguided concept of The Daughter.

Bumping this because an earlier question has been answered. The (real life) origin of the SSD named Whelm."

http://jasonfry.tumblr.com/post/26352866819/eg-to-warfare-endnotes-pt-14