Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

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Jedipilot24
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Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

Post by Jedipilot24 »

In the Alderaan essay: http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tec ... eraan.html
It is claimed that Alderaan was in the process of rearming and had ordered warships and the EU novel 'Slave Ship' is cited. I actually have that novel and here is the relevant passage, it is from the PoV of the CEO of KDY known simply as Kuat:
The Emperor had already shown his disregard for maintaining the galaxy's customer base, by sanctioning the late Governor Tarkin's destruction of the planet Alderaan with the massive firepower of the original Death Star. That had personally rankled Kuat; there had been an outstanding contract with the local government on Alderaan for a utility fleet of perimeter observation scouts and orbital customs stations, all to be furnished at a considerable profit by Kuat Drive Yards. The units had just been about ready to leave the KDY construction docks and head off in a delivery flotilla to Alderaan when the word of their destination being reduced to a few charred ashes drifting in navigable space had reached Kuat of Kuat. A near-total write-down for the corporation, salvageable only in part by breaking up the undelivered vessels and recycling some of their components into the next order for Imperial battle cruisers.
So it was the Empire that was ordering warships, not Alderaan. The fact that the ships and stations used components that could be recycled and used on warships only means that KDY--like most manufacturers--uses generic components to cut costs whenever possible.
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Re: Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

Post by The Vortex Empire »

That page is written from the point of view of an in-universe Imperial propagandist.
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Re: Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

Post by Havok »

Yup and the passage, based on the tone, is written by a annoyed business man.

"perimeter observation scouts" "orbital customs stations" certainly doesn't constitute rearming when your enemy would be the fucking Empire.

The information that I find interesting about this post is that someone actually had to find "proof" that Alderaan wasn't full of bad guys. :lol:
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Re: Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

Post by Darth Fanboy »

Havok wrote: The information that I find interesting about this post is that someone actually had to find "proof" that Alderaan wasn't full of bad guys. :lol:
I don't have to tell you twice that there are people out there who would ask for said proof, and justify Tarkin's actions.
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Re: Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

Post by Thanas »

Some of those idiots are even on this very board.
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Re: Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

Post by TC Pilot »

Another thing to cast doubt on Alderaan's remilitarization is the fact that the ships they had piled all their Clone Wars-era weapons onto and sent out into deep space could have been recalled at any point but never were. Sure the stuff is 20 years old, but it's better than paying overinflated prices to arms manufacturers that can't possibly escape notice by the Imperial authorities.
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Re: Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

Post by Eleventh Century Remnant »

It's a suspension of disbelief issue for me. As a member of the audience, I understand Alderaan is supposed to be the world of peaceful innocents massacred by the evil empire, so far so mythic.

As a fan and fanfic type I have to suspend disbelief a little higher than that, assume the inhabitants of the universe don't know they're living in a morality play, and that they try to deal with it, rationalise it, rebel against it, fill out the spectrum of human and nonhuman reaction-
and there will be cruel bastards, there always are- the sort who make up the Empire for a start, who do think it was a righteous shoot and justify it in various ways.

Out of universe; bullshit. In universe, not that unreasonable a reaction, especially with the thought control exercised by the Empire and it's security arms.
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Re: Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

I just chalk it up to high levels of blood cholesterol and be done with it.
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Re: Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

Post by Darth Tedious »

I find it amazing that this guy Kuat would be so annoyed about losing a very minor transaction. Sure, I can see how it would have been better for him if the Empire had let Alderaan get their new ships (and then destroy them, so the Alderaanians can buy more...), but really?
Hurting the customer base?
I always thought KDY were a rather big operation...

This is the same KDY as the rest of the EU, right? The same one that churned out 25,000 MILE-LONG CAPSHIPS in 20 years? (shit, that's about 3 per day!) But not getting to sell some scout ships and customs platforms to Alderaan HURTS BUSINESS!

It's almost like a wholesaler, annoyed because the tiny retailer he sells to was put out of business by a huge big chain store he also sells to.
"Fuck you, those guys used to buy the 1% of my stock I wasn't already selling to you!"

How greedy was this guy? And shouldn't he have hated Alderaan anyway, for buying and using Corellian ships that weren't made by his company?
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Re: Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

Post by fordlltwm »

If memory serves Kuat weren't the sole producers of ISD's, the were made at Fondor, in the Kroonacht cluster and at Bilbringi (sp?) to name a few places
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Re: Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

Post by Thanas »

Darth Tedious wrote:I find it amazing that this guy Kuat would be so annoyed about losing a very minor transaction. Sure, I can see how it would have been better for him if the Empire had let Alderaan get their new ships (and then destroy them, so the Alderaanians can buy more...), but really?
Hurting the customer base?
I always thought KDY were a rather big operation...
They are. But remember that some EU sources have a very minimalistic outlook - like the one which claimed building the Executor nearly bankrupted the Empire (but they built two DS in secret :roll: ).
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Re: Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

Post by Darth Tedious »

Yeah, I figured that it was a result of minialist EU writing (nevermind the Executor sending the galaxy broke, the old WEG 1st Edition says that ISDs almost bankrupted the Empire!).

I just found it fun to run with- in context with what we know, the only way it can be reconciled is if this guy is the greediest man in the universe.

I'd bet he'd go to war over taxation of trade routes... :D
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Re: Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

Post by Captain Seafort »

Darth Tedious wrote:nevermind the Executor sending the galaxy broke, the old WEG 1st Edition says that ISDs almost bankrupted the Empire!
What the problem with that? Production of any item will bankrupt any economy if they make too many of them.
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Re: Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

Post by Havok »

Captain Seafort wrote:
Darth Tedious wrote:nevermind the Executor sending the galaxy broke, the old WEG 1st Edition says that ISDs almost bankrupted the Empire!
What the problem with that? Production of any item will bankrupt any economy if they make too many of them.
Are you fucking serious?

The Empire could make 10,000 executors and it shouldn't even put a dent in the GALACTIC economy. Let alone come close to bankrupting it.

Do people not realize the scope of Star Wars at all?
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Re: Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

Post by Captain Seafort »

Havok wrote:Are you fucking serious?
Absolutely.
The Empire could make 10,000 executors and it shouldn't even put a dent in the GALACTIC economy. Let alone come close to bankrupting it.
So what? How about billion Executors? A trillion? A billion trillion? Sooner or later they will bankrupt themselves. If they try and make too many teaspoons they'll bankrupt themselves (although the numbers required to do so will, obviously, be slightly higher for teaspoons than for Executors).
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Re: Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

Post by Thanas »

Captain Seafort wrote:
Darth Tedious wrote:nevermind the Executor sending the galaxy broke, the old WEG 1st Edition says that ISDs almost bankrupted the Empire!
What the problem with that? Production of any item will bankrupt any economy if they make too many of them.
Yeah, but they only built numbers in the low ten thousands. Heck, the two DS might have outmassed them.
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Re: Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

Post by gigabytelord »

Havok wrote:
Captain Seafort wrote:
Darth Tedious wrote:nevermind the Executor sending the galaxy broke, the old WEG 1st Edition says that ISDs almost bankrupted the Empire!
What the problem with that? Production of any item will bankrupt any economy if they make too many of them.
Are you fucking serious?

The Empire could make 10,000 executors and it shouldn't even put a dent in the GALACTIC economy. Let alone come close to bankrupting it.

Do people not realize the scope of Star Wars at all?
Just one question, what about maintenance? I've never read any of the star wars books, and frankly I don't intend to now but one would think that building those ships would be easy, but maintaining them for long periods of time, not so easy.
I mean if it costed the USN nothing to maintain super carriers, what would prevent them from building dozens, even hundreds?
Surely the cost of feeding the crews, fueling the ships, repairing battle damage, and fatigue from general usage, and lets not forget the tremendous number of paychecks that have to be sent out every month, dear god I feel sorry for the accountants who have to run those numbers.

Does anyone have actual figures on the cost of maintaining a single SD? or an Executor?
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Re: Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

Post by Connor MacLeod »

We're assuming the Empire operates an efficient, competent and practical military. Which, point of fact, it doesn't. The Death Stars are rather unusual in that they were built a.) in secret, which puts them outside the normal industrial sphere and b.) with direct supervision of the Emperor. Dicking around is not likely to go around like that.

I mean they did build walkers thinking they're competent military vehicles and stuck exposed windowed towers on their starships. Not exactly paragons of efficiency that (but then again they never really needed to be.)
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Re: Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

Post by Kori »

Connor MacLeod wrote:We're assuming the Empire operates an efficient, competent and practical military. Which, point of fact, it doesn't. The Death Stars are rather unusual in that they were built a.) in secret, which puts them outside the normal industrial sphere and b.) with direct supervision of the Emperor. Dicking around is not likely to go around like that.
Actually, the first Death Star was a separatist weapon (although built in secret and under supervision of Darth Sidius himself)

Anyway, I'm just wondering, why Empire continued to produce death stars after the destruction of the 1st during BY? Look, the rebels already knew how to destroy it. They did it once..and they did it again. The 2nd Death Star had only one upgrade-the ability to destroy ships...huge ships...like, Mon-Kalamari or SDs. Anyway, it still couldn't fire that beam in any direction and protect itself from small ships like x- and y-wings and the millenium falcon which eventually brought the station to its downfall. And as it was mentioned before me the maintenance of the death star was the real trick. Supplying it with fuel, repair droids, troops and qualified personnel required a lot of money and people. I hope you all played Star Wars Empire at War and remember that one of the missions was to conquer Geonosis and enslave its population...all for the sake of that death star. I'm sure a Super SB with the very same ability and a better hyperdrive would do better both in offense and defense. But that'd be another Star Wars story..
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Re: Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

Post by Captain Seafort »

Thanas wrote:Yeah, but they only built numbers in the low ten thousands. Heck, the two DS might have outmassed them.
Low tens of thousands according to some sources, hundreds of thousands to millions according to others. I can't think of any two examples that agree with each other regarding the total size of the Imperial fleet, so I don't have a problem with another source claiming that said fleet bankrupted the Empire, assuming that that source didn't give an explicit stupidly low number for the strength of said fleet.
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Re: Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

Post by PhilosopherOfSorts »

The second Death Star, if you recall, was not complete at the time of its destruction, that's why the fighters could get inside in the first place. Had it been completed, it would not have had the same vulnerability as the first one. As for why the Empire built another Death Star, well, the problem that it was intended to solve still existed, that being planetary shields that could stand up to a conventional bombardment for weeks, if not months. Remember Obi-Wan's mention of sieges in the outer rim, from ROTS? Those were something Palpatine wanted to avoid having to do again.

I personally think Tarkin was lucky that the Death Star was destroyed and he was killed onboard. I just can't really see Palpatine being pleased that Tarkin just up and decided to vaporize a core world on his own authority, but he might, just might, accept it as necessary, if it meant no more opposition to his rule. After Alderaan, Tarkin had two options, end the Rebellion, or die horribly, over a long period, several times.
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Re: Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

Post by Captain Seafort »

PhilosopherOfSorts wrote:I personally think Tarkin was lucky that the Death Star was destroyed and he was killed onboard. I just can't really see Palpatine being pleased that Tarkin just up and decided to vaporize a core world on his own authority
I can't remember the exact source, but IIRC Palpatine pre-authorised the destruction of Alderaan.
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Re: Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

Post by PhilosopherOfSorts »

Did he? I don't think I've ever seen anything like that, but then, I am wrong sometimes.
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Re: Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

Post by SCRawl »

PhilosopherOfSorts wrote:Did he? I don't think I've ever seen anything like that, but then, I am wrong sometimes.
From the quote in the OP:
Slave Ship, apparently wrote:The Emperor had already shown his disregard for maintaining the galaxy's customer base, by sanctioning the late Governor Tarkin's destruction of the planet Alderaan with the massive firepower of the original Death Star.
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Re: Alderaan--not a planet of traitors

Post by Darth Tedious »

gigabytelord wrote:Just one question, what about maintenance? I've never read any of the star wars books, and frankly I don't intend to now but one would think that building those ships would be easy, but maintaining them for long periods of time, not so easy.
I mean if it costed the USN nothing to maintain super carriers, what would prevent them from building dozens, even hundreds?
Surely the cost of feeding the crews, fueling the ships, repairing battle damage, and fatigue from general usage, and lets not forget the tremendous number of paychecks that have to be sent out every month, dear god I feel sorry for the accountants who have to run those numbers.

Does anyone have actual figures on the cost of maintaining a single SD? or an Executor?
Let's think about feeding the Fleet...

An ISD-I has a crew compliment of 37,085 + 9,700 carried troops.
So, 46,785 people.
Assuming they all eat 3 meals a day, that's 982,485 meals a WEEK.

That's over 51 MILLION MEALS A YEAR. PER ISD.

x25,000 = 1,277,230,500,000 meals a year to feed all the ISD's out there.

Now, that sounds like an awful lot, but the population of Coruscant eats that many meals at lunchtime each day (assuming not too many people skip lunch).

So the Supercarriers eat as much food in a year as the Capital eats for lunch each day.

Let's compare that to the US Navy for a second...

6,000 people on a Nimitz Class.
10 of those ships.
Do the math...
65,520,000 meals a year.
320 million meals to give the whole US lunch.

So the ratio of food for the civilian populace to the cost of feeding the crews is 5:1.

Consider though, ISD's make up the bulk of the Imperial Navy, while the Nimitz Class are less than 5% of the US Navy's hull count (we could do maths for the whole US Navy, sadly we don't have numbers for the rest of the Imperial's). Also the fact that Coruscant is only one planet (equivalent to a single city in the US, albeit a highly populated one).

Now, all this relates only to food, as you noted, there are MANY factors. But comparisons such as this one give you some sense of the scale we're dealing with.

Yes, being an accountant for the Empire would suck hard, but imagine being the Chief Sewerage Systems Manager on Coruscant...
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