Theoretical Imperial Order of Battle

[Lord Revan]

Well not really. The station was blown up but it took a set of rather extraordinary circumstances involving a Jedi no less. Under any normal set of conditions he would have been dead right. Especially if instead of acting like an overconfident twat he actually deployed all of his fighters.

To be fair it was Tarkin not Motti who was in charge of the Death Star, though he was still an aggorant twat.

[NecronLord]

Motti's position was that of the overconfident twat - the twattishness was inherent to his position: "Any attack made by the Rebels against this station would be a useless gesture, no matter what technical data they have obtained."

And we're assuming that the decision not to launch fighters was Tarkin's and not Admiral Motti's.

[Purple]

That's the thing. It would in fact have been a useless gesture if not for the very strange and unusual set of circumstances that lead to a magical space wizard from an order thought extinct by everyone and his smuggler friend showing up to save the day. So given the information he had to work with when he made that statement he was absolutely right.

[MKSheppard]

Think about the logistical reasons to simplify down to as few classes as possible in each major weight class to save money and spare parts stocking complexity particularly when you're running a galaxy spanning GALACTIC EMPIRE.

Additionally, consider Han's position as a hotshot smuggler -- he'd have been travelling across some of the most heavily defended or patrolled spacelanes in the galaxy, because that's where the money is, so he'd be used to the idea of ImpStars hauling down random smugglers.

There's also another reason the ISD size-ships may be ubiquitous -- technology limitations.

Looking at Wookiepediea, I noticed the Mandator Class Star Dreadnought by KDY - 8 km long, but used for local patrol and defense of the Kuat sector due to hyperdrive limitations on range.

This could also explain why small craft like the Millennium Falcon are economical enough to be used as cargo ships -- there may be an exponential function in play with craft mass and power needed to "push" it through hyperspace.

Over the 25,000 years that hyperdrives have been in existence in the Galaxy, this exponential function could have been steadily pushed rightwards, but it still remains a pretty steep barrier -- the Empire doesn't have infinite money to spend -- which raises the amusing idea that the power needed to push the Death Stars through hyperspace might have been more power-consuming than actually firing the big gun at full power...which does go a long way towards explaining why everyone in ANH was befuddled by them -- "that's no moon!".

[AniThyng]

Think about the logistical reasons to simplify down to as few classes as possible in each major weight class to save money and spare parts stocking complexity particularly when you're running a galaxy spanning GALACTIC EMPIRE.

Additionally, consider Han's position as a hotshot smuggler -- he'd have been travelling across some of the most heavily defended or patrolled spacelanes in the galaxy, because that's where the money is, so he'd be used to the idea of ImpStars hauling down random smugglers.

There's also another reason the ISD size-ships may be ubiquitous -- technology limitations.

Looking at Wookiepediea, I noticed the Mandator Class Star Dreadnought by KDY - 8 km long, but used for local patrol and defense of the Kuat sector due to hyperdrive limitations on range.

This could also explain why small craft like the Millennium Falcon are economical enough to be used as cargo ships -- there may be an exponential function in play with craft mass and power needed to "push" it through hyperspace.

Over the 25,000 years that hyperdrives have been in existence in the Galaxy, this exponential function could have been steadily pushed rightwards, but it still remains a pretty steep barrier -- the Empire doesn't have infinite money to spend -- which raises the amusing idea that the power needed to push the Death Stars through hyperspace might have been more power-consuming than actually firing the big gun at full power...which does go a long way towards explaining why everyone in ANH was befuddled by them -- "that's no moon!".

Anything smaller than an ISD is too weak, anything bigger than an ISD is too uneconomical/inefficient is what it boils down to then?

And if you need more power, just group a bunch of ISDs together. Easier logistics and they scale very well.

As I recall, in old EU the limitations on the range of Mandator's etc is also partly political, in that the republic did not want anyone to have warships of such scale that also could project power on a galactic range. Not that anyone would need to spend money, space and resources on range when you might as well use that space for more weapons or just make it cheaper, since a sector defense ship need not leave its own sector.

[Esquire]

Re: Mandator-class dreadnoughts and hyperdrives, if I remember correctly in Legends their range limitation was due to legal factors, not technical - the Republic required them to be built with short-range hyperdrives to limit their potential use as weapons of conquest. Do we have any source for them in the new canon yet?

[AniThyng]

Re: Mandator-class dreadnoughts and hyperdrives, if I remember correctly in Legends their range limitation was due to legal factors, not technical - the Republic required them to be built with short-range hyperdrives to limit their potential use as weapons of conquest. Do we have any source for them in the new canon yet?

Even the Empire probably would want to continue that tradition, it's bad enough when admirals with access to ISDs go rogue, an Executor going rogue and running to wherever would be much more troublesome. At least if some Kuati fleet decides to defect to the rebellion, it's not going very far at all!

[Rhadamantus]

Think about the logistical reasons to simplify down to as few classes as possible in each major weight class to save money and spare parts stocking complexity particularly when you're running a galaxy spanning GALACTIC EMPIRE.

Additionally, consider Han's position as a hotshot smuggler -- he'd have been travelling across some of the most heavily defended or patrolled spacelanes in the galaxy, because that's where the money is, so he'd be used to the idea of ImpStars hauling down random smugglers.

There's also another reason the ISD size-ships may be ubiquitous -- technology limitations.

Looking at Wookiepediea, I noticed the Mandator Class Star Dreadnought by KDY - 8 km long, but used for local patrol and defense of the Kuat sector due to hyperdrive limitations on range.

This could also explain why small craft like the Millennium Falcon are economical enough to be used as cargo ships -- there may be an exponential function in play with craft mass and power needed to "push" it through hyperspace.

Over the 25,000 years that hyperdrives have been in existence in the Galaxy, this exponential function could have been steadily pushed rightwards, but it still remains a pretty steep barrier -- the Empire doesn't have infinite money to spend -- which raises the amusing idea that the power needed to push the Death Stars through hyperspace might have been more power-consuming than actually firing the big gun at full power...which does go a long way towards explaining why everyone in ANH was befuddled by them -- "that's no moon!".

Anything smaller than an ISD is too weak, anything bigger than an ISD is too uneconomical/inefficient is what it boils down to then?

And if you need more power, just group a bunch of ISDs together. Easier logistics and they scale very well.

As I recall, in old EU the limitations on the range of Mandator's etc is also partly political, in that the republic did not want anyone to have warships of such scale that also could project power on a galactic range. Not that anyone would need to spend money, space and resources on range when you might as well use that space for more weapons or just make it cheaper, since a sector defense ship need not leave its own sector.

If you put 72 ISDs against a Mandator, the Mandator wins and is totally undamaged. That's why big ships exist.

[MKSheppard]

Anything smaller than an ISD is too weak, anything bigger than an ISD is too uneconomical/inefficient is what it boils down to then?

And if you need more power, just group a bunch of ISDs together. Easier logistics and they scale very well.

Simon Jester also said this as well.

It's not as neatly simplistic as that; since you don't want to use ISDs for "Trash duties", and you do need some sort of screening vessels for a battleline of ISDs.

And regarding the Executor, long ago I THINK someone once did an analysis of Executor Geometry and concluded that it had less turbolasers per size than an ImpStar.

[Simon_Jester]

In short Tagge was right, the rebel alliance is too well equipped, B-wings are particularly dangerous, and even Imperators aren't immune to squadrons of rebel starfighters in the nu-canon. And they're an even more serious threat to anything smaller.

Yes- note to others that this doesn't mean the Rebellion has enough forces to defeat the whole Empire. What it means is that at the point of contact, where the Rebels meet the Empire, their weapons are of high enough quality to threaten the Empire's ships.

Think about two cases in modernish warfare: Iraqi guerillas against American vehicle patrols, and Somali pirates against modern navies.

The pirates can't credibly threaten modern warships. They have no antiship weapons bigger than maybe a bazooka. Therefore, the 'minimum size' of a warship intended solely to fight the pirates would be fairly small, because you don't need bulk and size to make it safe to fight them.

By contrast, Iraqi guerillas could easily threaten patrols of soldiers in unarmored Humvees. For this very reason, despite the fact that it was fighting a 'ragtag' guerilla force, the US had to spend quite a lot of money upgrading the armor protection and mine protection of its patrol vehicles.

One group of light, agile, outgunned opponents posed a threat to the enemy units sent to fight it. The other didn't. One could only be fought safely by upgrading the units, the other could be fought with what was available.

What's the "The rebellion is insignificant" counterpoint to Tagge's statement about the Rebel's being well equipped enough to be a serious threat to the starfleet anyhow? That Tagge is misinformed/engaging in hyperbole?

Aside from different men saying it...

The Rebellion can be 'insignificant' in the sense of never standing a chance of defeating the Empire in open, mass scale Clone Wars-style warfare, and still be 'a threat' in the sense that they have heavy weapons capable of wrecking individual Imperial military units that come into contact with them. See above.

That's the thing. It would in fact have been a useless gesture if not for the very strange and unusual set of circumstances that lead to a magical space wizard from an order thought extinct by everyone and his smuggler friend showing up to save the day. So given the information he had to work with when he made that statement he was absolutely right.

There is no reason to assume that the thirty-fighter attack launched by the Rebels at Yavin represents their maximum-effort possible attack on the Death Star. The same attack launched with, say, three hundred fighters might well have had a better chance of success. Jedi or no Jedi.

Moreover, Motti could not know what weaknesses the technical data on the Death Star might reveal. Any weaknesses the Empire already knew of would have been corrected, but unknown bugs crop up in complicated designs all the time. What if there had been an even more easily exploited weakness? It would be blind stupidity to dismiss this possibility.

[Lord Revan]

Also Chief Bast told that there was a "risk" with rebel attack tactics, suggesting that there was a signifigant enough chance that rebels would succeed (the imperials didn't know about the fact that Luke was force aware) after he would probably not inform Tarkin about a 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% chance of success, as it would be a pointless distraction in the middle of combat. Bare in mind that there was nothing about the rebel attack that needed a Jedi per say (as the Rebels didn't know either that Luke was Force Aware), but rather the shot was really hard for a normal pilot to do (red leader nearly got it but was not quite accurate enough).

[MKSheppard]

Though the new EU has, inspired by the McQuarrie art, said that B-wings killed the Devastator at Endor with proton torpedoes.

After the shields of the ISD having been hammered down by the intense fighting beforehand, no doubt.

In the Canon, a squadron of B-Wings can pose a serious threat to 100% fresh Nebulon B frigates -- which does make sense, a 300m long vessel that's about 18~ times longer than a B-Wing would be at serious danger from a squadron of them.

[NOTE: The Nebulon B is EXTREMELY narrow, with very little actual volume (due to the weird configuration) for it's length, so using length is a pretty good estimator for this case].

[MKSheppard]

As I recall, in old EU the limitations on the range of Mandator's etc is also partly political, in that the republic did not want anyone to have warships of such scale that also could project power on a galactic range.

But if there is an exponential function in play with hyperdrives; then it makes sense why nobody's ever built Death Star battle planetoids before; to the point where Han and the others are surprised by the appearance of the Death Star in ANH -- it's in the middle of nowhere, near no local construction facilities (ala the Coruscant habitat planetoids).

[Lord Revan]

well what was Alderaan orbit isn't exactly "middle of nowhere" but rest of the point stands, as Alderaan doesn't seem to have much in way of orbital facilities.

[Adam Reynolds]

If you put 72 ISDs against a Mandator, the Mandator wins and is totally undamaged. That's why big ships exist.

While that is true in principle, it isn't supported by the actual evidence of fleet battles in Star Wars. At Endor, the Rebel fleet takes out Executor without much difficulty. While it is true that the Empire wasn't seriously attacking them until later, the Rebel fleet was still able to penetrate their shields. While you could argue that the A-wing attack was merely luck, their bridge shields were down.

Similar inefficiency is shown with the performance of the Malvolence in the hands of the CIS. It is disabled by a mere handful of Y-wings. Though the follow on Republic fleet has a hard time actually destroying it as a result of its mass, it isn't exactly the grand threat that it appears to be once the Republic pins it down. Grievous is sufficiently worried about the survivability of his ship that they actually take the extreme step of killing survivors as a means to cover up its performance characteristics.

It is highly likely that massive ships are disproportionally more vulnerable to fighter attack, as seen with both of these examples. It more than makes up for their increase in firepower relative to ISDs, as killing a dozen ISDs takes far more effort from fighters than killing Executor.

After the shields of the ISD having been hammered down by the intense fighting beforehand, no doubt.

In the Canon, a squadron of B-Wings can pose a serious threat to 100% fresh Nebulon B frigates -- which does make sense, a 300m long vessel that's about 18~ times longer than a B-Wing would be at serious danger from a squadron of them.

[NOTE: The Nebulon B is EXTREMELY narrow, with very little actual volume (due to the weird configuration) for it's length, so using length is a pretty good estimator for this case].

I'm not sure the old paradigm that fighter attacks are useless is as true as it used to be. Fighter attacks in Clone Wars are disproportionally effective against capital ships, even when those capital ships should be fully shielded. Malvolence is a clear example, but Anakin also takes out a few frigates with only the laser cannons on his starfighter(in one case firing at the forward shields of a ship where it was stated that the shields were fully directed towards the front) and droid starfighters are a serious threat to the Venator class when used with sufficient numbers.

Not to mention that Lando's dialog in Return of the Jedi indicates that fighters are a threat to capital ships, as he orders that his fighters draw fire away from cruisers. Why would he give such an order if fighter attacks were mostly harmless? While Imperial fighters did no appreciable damage to Rebel ships, this is largely because the Rebel fighters took care of them.

Also, is the Nebulon B still an Imperial design? It makes far more sense as a local craft donated or stolen by the Rebel Alliance than an Imperial design.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

If you put 72 ISDs against a Mandator, the Mandator wins and is totally undamaged. That's why big ships exist.

While that is true in principle...

You are but one ship, and we will overcome you as easily as the wolfpack overcomes the bear.

Those 72 ISDs can surround that Mandator, constrain its maneuvering options, exhuast its ammunition/power that much more quickly, and eventually bring it down through sheer weight of numbers. Bigger guns on a bigger ship do not necessarily prevail over larger numbers.

[Adam Reynolds]

What is that quote from?

[Rhadamantus]

If you put 72 ISDs against a Mandator, the Mandator wins and is totally undamaged. That's why big ships exist.

While that is true in principle...

You are but one ship, and we will overcome you as easily as the wolfpack overcomes the bear.

Those 72 ISDs can surround that Mandator, constrain its maneuvering options, exhuast its ammunition/power that much more quickly, and eventually bring it down through sheer weight of numbers. Bigger guns on a bigger ship do not necessarily prevail over larger numbers.

Even if we neglect burst overload with shields, a Mandator can kill an ISD in a fraction of the time it takes 72 ISDs to kill a mandator. The 72 ISDs will be attrited down to nothing before they can breach it's shields. If we count burst overload, then a mandator can kill several ISDs per second. The battle would be over in a minute at most.

[NecronLord]

I'm not sure the old paradigm that fighter attacks are useless is as true as it used to be. Fighter attacks in Clone Wars are disproportionally effective against capital ships, even when those capital ships should be fully shielded. Malvolence is a clear example, but Anakin also takes out a few frigates with only the laser cannons on his starfighter(in one case firing at the forward shields of a ship where it was stated that the shields were fully directed towards the front) and droid starfighters are a serious threat to the Venator class when used with sufficient numbers.

I'm not sure that paradigm was ever actually true; back in the day it was often evoked to rebut then-canon EU sources like the Rogue Squadron books, the X-wing games, and so forth. But never did I actually see in the film 'They're going for the medical frigate!' followed by 'No worries, it's reactor is massively larger than TIE interceptors, so let's just let them bounce off the shields' which is what you'd have expected the reply to be in the SDN-notion that all combat just comes back to weapons output.

Instead what we get is:

"Fighters coming in!"
"There's too many of them!"
"Accelerate to attack speed, draw their fire away from the cruisers."

Almost like Imperial Fighters could hurt cruisers! In the old SDN paradigm the correct response to the rebels from the Imperial ships refusing to fire on their capital ships at Endor would have been to return all rebel fighters to their bays, because fighters can't hurt capital ships, and just let the TIEs peck inconsequentially at the rebel ships' impermeable shields.

That's obviously not what's going on, and never was.

Fighters can hurt capital ships, that's been an element of Star Wars lore since RotJ and really since ANH if you count the Death Star.

Likewise, if we look at the Battle of Naboo, the Naboo and the jedi clearly thought that a squadron of righters could do something to hurt the Trade Federation command ship; we either have to accept that a squadron of fighters poses some risk, however small, to a ship that actually dwarfs ISDs, or we have to imply that everyone involved on the Naboo and Trade Federation sides were thundering retards; as in the 'it all comes down to reactor output and shields are impossible to get through for fighters' side - the Trade Federation could have just kept their shields up and let the Naboo fighters run out of fuel.

Sure there's a line from one of the Naboo pilots that 'the deflector shield is too strong' but if there was no prospect whatsoever of harming a large ship with fighters, that clearly renders the entire attack idiotic and the Trade Federation's response of deploying fighters is likewise stupid.

The fact is, every time a fighter attacks a large starship in star wars, it's taken at least semi-seriously as a threat.

[Galvatron]

Almost like Imperial Fighters could hurt cruisers! In the old SDN paradigm the correct response to the rebels from the Imperial ships refusing to fire on their capital ships at Endor would have been to return all rebel fighters to their bays, because fighters can't hurt capital ships, and just let the TIEs peck inconsequentially at the rebel ships' impermeable shields.

That's obviously not what's going on, and never was.

Ten years ago, you'd have been roasted as a heretic for saying that here.

[NecronLord]

Ten years ago we were all much younger. The fact is, we must accept either that Palpatine and everyone else engaged in planning on the Imperial side at Endor was stupid, as were all the rebel commanders, and that TIEs could never harm rebel cruisers - meaning of course that by Palpatine's orders the imperial forces would actually not be able to molest the rebel capships at all, as fighters are worthless - and likewise both sides at Naboo, or that small craft - by use of photons, flying under the shields, or other tricks one may prefer to invoke - can harm capital ships.

Validating all the EU, new and old, stories where they also harm capital ships.

In the 'fighters and bombers are worthless' systema, the rebels should have just been able to sail past the Imperial ships like they're at some sort of a regatta, ignoring the little flashes of TIES splatting on their shields.

[Galvatron]

Ten years ago we were all much younger.

And many of us were motivated to inflate Star Wars numbers and rationalize away evidence that didn't fit a certain narrative for the sake of the versus debates. I'm glad that's finally petered out.

[NecronLord]

I wasn't going to mention that, but yes, the notion that a small craft could harm a star destroyer obviously has knock on effects for VS nonsense, but its really unimportant to star wars discussion.

[Simon_Jester]

If you put 72 ISDs against a Mandator, the Mandator wins and is totally undamaged. That's why big ships exist.

You are but one ship, and we will overcome you as easily as the wolfpack overcomes the bear.

Those 72 ISDs can surround that Mandator, constrain its maneuvering options, exhuast its ammunition/power that much more quickly, and eventually bring it down through sheer weight of numbers. Bigger guns on a bigger ship do not necessarily prevail over larger numbers.

Even if we neglect burst overload with shields, a Mandator can kill an ISD in a fraction of the time it takes 72 ISDs to kill a mandator. The 72 ISDs will be attrited down to nothing before they can breach it's shields. If we count burst overload, then a mandator can kill several ISDs per second. The battle would be over in a minute at most.

Nope.

Firstly, if you're going to play that kind of numbers game, you're ignoring a critical element- maneuver and agility. This is not just about acceleration, it's about 'jerk-' about the ability to quickly change the magnitude and direction of your acceleration, so that your actual position is far from where the enemy expected it to be.

ISDs have a straight line acceleration of roughly 3000 gravities and a respectable rate of turn. By varying their acceleration with respect to their base course they could easily introduce a random element to their acceleration of one kilometer per second squared, or more, in all three dimensions.

This means that aiming a shot at where an ISD is going to be in one second, based on the ISD's position and velocity now, could easily result in miscalculating the target's actual position by a kilometer. After two seconds, the ship could be four kilometers away from where you expected it to be; in three seconds, nine kilometers, and so on.

Being wrong about the target's position by a full kilometer in any direction will usually result in a miss against the ISD's hull. Being wrong by four kilometers invariably means a miss. Nine kilometers, and you won't even be close.

Given that turbolaser bolts appear to travel with finite velocity (light speed, or much much less than light speed if you go strictly by the graphics), then if you fire a turbolaser at a maneuvering target, and that bolt takes more than a few seconds to arrive, you have almost no chance of actually hitting the target. Because the time it takes the ISD to dodge by a distance equal to several times its own length is far less than the time it takes your shots to arrive, so you have to fire enormous numbers of shots to score a reasonable number of hits.

Meanwhile, a dreadnought-sized ship ten times the length, width, and height of an ISD has 100 times the target area, so even if it enjoys equal acceleration it needs a little over three times as much time to dodge as far in any given direction. And it is far more likely to be hit by random fire sprayed in its general direction, because, again, bigger target.

Furthermore, it would be more than a little surprising if such a massive ship could alter its course and acceleration as quickly and easily as an ISD, because of its greater size. Sure, it may have equally powerful engines, but that doesn't translate to equal agility. Unless a ship in the size range of a Mandator or Executor can not only match the agility of an ordinary star destroyer, but attain agility several times higher, it's going to take a lot more hits in combat than the star destroyer would.

Even given the disruption of command and control that doomed the Executor, the fact that the ship was destroyed by ramming the Death Star when it had started out a very great distance away... that does not speak well of the ship's ability to dodge.

...

So we can reasonably expect that supercapital ships in Star Wars, when fighting very large wolfpacks of destroyers, will miss with the vast majority of their weapons fire, while being hit far more often than they hit their targets in return. That greatly extends the time required for the supercapital to beat down the wolfpack. It therefore increases the risk that the supercapital will run out of fuel or get unlucky and suffer serious damage from the wolfpack's relatively light weapons, before the supercapital manages to thin out the wolfpack's numbers to where they no longer pose a credible threat no matter how much higher their hit rate is.

The only way to counter this is to fire massed barrages of guided missiles (which can home in on a maneuvering target) or use area effect weapons (that will annihilate an ISD even if it is several kilometers from the actual target, and that is easier said than done).

[NecronLord]

The only way to counter this is to fire massed barrages of guided missiles (which can home in on a maneuvering target) or use area effect weapons (that will annihilate an ISD even if it is several kilometers from the actual target, and that is easier said than done).

Presumably the fact that it has such a weapon is why the Malevolence is much more feared than the likes of Mandators. It actually can fire at an area several kilometers wide and hit everything within that area.