Rebel Alliance vs Federation

[IRG CommandoJoe]

For a variety of reasons, I believe the Rebel Alliance might actually be better suited for fighting the Federation:

As you all should know, Mon Calamari Star Cruisers have vastly superior shields to any Imperial starship, let alone unconventional Executor (or Super)-class Star Destroyers. Although the shield strength is somewhat similar to Star Destroyers, they have much quicker recharge rates, triple that of a SD. There are many shield generators inside Mon Cals. They can simply take out used up shield generators, put in new ones, repair or recharge the old ones, and continue to recycle them so that they will never fail, unless damaged beyond repair by overwhelming firepower possessed by such ships as Star Destroyers, but not by Federation ships. We know that their turbolasers deal similar damage to Federation ships as would Star Destroyers.

So basically, what we have are ships that the Federation would have no hope for destroying at all, with turbolasers slightly weaker than Star Destroyers, and that would be able to deploy fighters that have shielding and formidable weapons against even Star Wars ships. It should also be noted that Federation ships were never designed to attack or even defend against starfighters of that type. Conversely, Rebel starifighters were designed especially for taking out much stronger capital ships than their own and surviving. With weaker shields and weapons, this would be a cakewalk for crack Rebel starfighter pilots. Imperial starfighters (at least TIE Interceptors and anything else built after that, with TIE Fighters happening to be a mediocre defense against Rebel starfighters) were actually designed to take out these Rebel starfighters so that their heavier capital ships could effectively destroy Rebel capital ships. For some unbelievable reason, fighters don't exist in the Federation, except for shuttles. Therefore, they would have little, if any at all, defense against Rebel starfighters.

I bet one Mon Cal, of any type, with a full compliment of starfighters could easily handle numerous Federation ships. Federation ships would be completely overwhelmed by fighters that have shielding and, please correct me if I'm wrong, multiple megaton-dealing blaster cannons and warheads zooming around them, with the additional dreadful hoplessness of withstanding the Mon Cal. However, in a similar situation with a Star Destroyer, unshielded TIE Fighters would not pose as much as a threat to Federation ships as say, an X-Wing would. Yes, there are Missile Boats and Gunboats and other wonderful weapons that Star Destroyers could deploy, but they aren't nearly as maneuverable or as fast as Rebel starfighters. The closest ship I could think of is a Skipray Blastboat, which has the speed and agility of a slower starfighter, but the firepower and armor of a an extremely light capital ship. Federation ships might be able to overcome these...I'm not entirely sure. But imagine Federation ships trying to take on Rogue Squadron!

Although it is more unlikely the Federation and the Rebel Alliance would fight each other, I believe if they did the Rebel Alliance could probably handle them better than the Empire might. There is a ridiculously inferior ratio of Rebel capital ships to Federation capital ships, but if the Rebels had several Mon Cals and each one could take on a fleet of Federation capital ships, plus the hundreds, or maybe thousands of starfighters the Rebels have, they could easily defeat the Federation. Not even including the weaker capital ships the Rebel Alliance has. Virtually all of the Rebel Alliance's ships are shielded, as they value quality over quantity (plus saving lives of highly valued pilots), and shields really help when Federation weapons are much weaker than the weapons in Star Wars. If starfighters were damaged, they could easily speed back into the Mon Cal hangar, under the protection of its ever-replenishing shields. I'm not sure how well smaller capital ships such as the Nebulon B Frigate or the Corelian Corvette would hold out against Federation ships, but the Rebel Alliance could simply modify their tactics and keep them close to the Mon Cals and assign starfighter escorts to all of the weaker ships.

As for Rebel Alliance bases, their planetary shields, such as the one on Hoth, should be able to keep Federation forces out. There is much, much more to consider, but generally, I'd buy that Rebel Alliance ships would be able to handle the Federation just as good, or even better than the Empire could. Any other opinions or ideas are welcome.

[IRG CommandoJoe]

D'OH! I just saw the thread down there, and am utterly embarassed...

[SCVN 2812]

The Mon Cals would indeed cause severe losses among Federation ships, but it seemed to me that the Rebel Alliance at least at the point of ROTJ didn't have more than a handfull of them. Their other ships are not nearly as well armed, most having under a dozen turbolaser cannons if I recall correctly, I don't have my guide to ships with me atm, so it's just from memory. Taking down a Mon Cal, like any large vessel, is simply a matter of attrition you hit it as hard and frequently as you can, which admittedly would be difficult but not impossible for Federation forces. Since turbolaser bolts move at slower than light speeds, it might be avisable for the larger Starfleet ships to hug the 1 lightsecond energy weapon barrier so they can maximize their chances to detect and dodge an incomming turbolaser shot while still being in effective firing range for their phasers. Since Mon Cals are so massive, hitting them, even at this extreme range should be a relatively simple task although it would take several large capital ships quite a while to do significant damage to the ships. They just have to be able to devote enough ships with enough firepower to do more damage to the shields than the Mon Cal can regenerate.

No hope of destroying at all is definitely an exaggeration, nothing is indestructable. As for Starfighters, the Federation's shuttles are armed, many of them such as the Danube, quite heavily so. The Federation does not have a true fighter class, but they do have quasi-fighters. The 60 meter Peregrine-class is referred to as a fighter throughout the Dominion war. They are capable of firing photon torpedos (at least the Maquis variations are) and mount several phaser arrays. Only 1 SW starfighter has ever been seen on screen to kill a capital ship, and that was the A-Wing that crashed into the Executer's bridge. The rest were seen strafing capital ships but appearing to do relatively little damage. Episode II's incredible cross sections rates the "lasers" mounted on fighters and smaller craft at 1-2 kilotons MAX. If this is to be believed then Starfighters can disable capital ships by targeting key systems on the external hull such as weapons, shield generators, engines ect. but destroy a ship outright? Missles and torpedos are of some concern though, but the Peregrines could keep the fighters buisy to reduce this threat.

The Rebel fleet is probably vastly outnumbered by the Federation if this is set around ROTJ. If the scenes in Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi are any indication, they may have only a few hundred ships, just based on visual observation if I'm wrong then I stand corrected. The Federation fleet numbers in the thousands, as large as 3000-5000 capital ships if the Federation has loosely equivilant ship building capacity as the Cardassian Union, a larger fleet if they have greater capacity. But most of these ships are outdated and nearing the mid to end of their operational life times, although they are refit periodically to keep them usable but age does have a tendency to come back to haunt older designs as was seen in the Dominion War where Miranda and Excelsior-class starships suffered more losses than just about any other class, although they were present in larger numbers so that could figure into it.

[Silver]

Numbering in the thousands, eh? The thousands that we saw fight all those vital Dominion War engagements? Even if we do go by ROTJ numbers, the Rebel fleet still has the capability to do hit and run engagements enough so that the Federation will have a very hard time pinning them down to commit to a full fledge battle. And this is also the Rebel fleet that had the capability to take Coruscant two and a half years after the Battle of Endor.

[TheDarkling]

By ROTJ it seems the rebels have about 30 or so caps ships if even that many - the feds have them at 30 to 1 and thats being very unkind to the feds.

[Silver]

Actually if you notice when Wedge's X-Wing pops out of the DS2 there appear to be more than 30 engine exhausts visible just against the backdrop of the Endor moon. If the Rebels had actually gone and formed a perimeter around the DS2 like they'd planned, there would obviously be more.

[Master of Ossus]

Sorry, I just read the post about how the Rebels could use hit and run tactics against the Federation, but why would they have to bother? Any of their capital ships is vastly more powerful than a comparably sized Federation ship, and they are hundreds, probably thousands, of times faster, so why would they need to worry about being "pinned down?"

[Silver]

Well since these people seem to be convinced the Feds can field several thousand plus ships at once...

Eventually they're gonna start hurting the Rebel fleet if we go by their viewpoint.

[Darth Yoshi]

No need. Just send in Rogue Squadron!

[David]

*Uses force powers to strange D Yoshi*



That darned Rogue Squadron.

[tharkûn]

Its called a no contest win. The rebels have no territory to defend, an ability to mass their ships and the feds have too many targets to defend compared to their ship totals. Strafing runs are also a distinct possibility. The feds have something to protect, so they kinda have to maintain lines, the rebs won't so they can just take out underfended territory and low concentrations of ships.

Frankly with the speed of starwars ships relative to their theatre of operations (a galaxy) naval combat should simply not be viable. Its exceptionally difficult to track people once they hype, they can hype in from anywhere along any vector, and ships can transverse the universe one tank of gas. I mean seriously say the rebs had only 30 cap ships total ... then they can pretty safely waltz around the galaxy and take out enemy concentrations of ships less than 5 (which seems quite normal). What buggers my mind is why in hell the rebs set up a base on a planet ... you can't service your cap ships in those places, its at the bottom of a gravity well, and there are so few places for the enemy to look to attack. Me ... I'd tow some derelect hulls and hanger queens into the middle of space, set up shop from there and just run strafes and brutal mismatches against the imps.

Given the speed and range of SW ships a good commander should never lose on the offensive (assuming there is no specific objective he needs to acheive) ... the only real danger is an ambush ... an ambush you can't run away from. For every ship you lose the imps should be going down at least 10 of similar class. There are no chokepoints in space and only objectives themselves are critical points ... the defender is always screwed, rather royally at that.