The Extended Universe

[David]

EU. Love it or hate? It's still there. I like most of the books, and while some were poorly written, I still read all I can get my hands on because without the EU, there would be no more SW. My favorite book series is the Black Fleet Crisis and my favorite comic is Dark Empire.

[Robert Treder]

The only EU that REALLY REALLY REALLY cheeses me off is the NJO. Don't get me fucking started.

[Cpt_Frank]

While I like most of the EU stuff (without it, there would be no more SW today), and the cool toys/characters it gave to us (VSDs, Interdictors, Thrawn, Eclipse) there is a thing which really pisses me off.
Reviving Emperor Palpatine (though it has a coolnes factor)
renders the death of Anakin Skywalker totally useless!
I mean, he gave his life for the balance of the froce, for the extinction of the Sith, and to save his son, all in vain!
Reading that really hurt in my opinion.
But hey, nothing's perfect, I like the EU overall very much.

[Robert Treder]

I completely concur, Captain. Dark Empire cheapened ROJ very much. Not only did it make Anakin's death for nothing, but having Luke fall so deeply back into the Dark Side cheapened his triumph at the end of ROJ.

[David]

The only EU that REALLY REALLY REALLY cheeses me off is the NJO. Don't get me fucking started

I sympathize. NJO was not very well written planned. I still have nightmares about Dark Journey.

[SPOOFE]

I like much of the EU. Even in the case of the poorly written books (like KJA's) I can still appreciate the basic storyline.

I like the idea behind the NJO (although I've only read Vector Prime, and I wasn't impressed by the writing's quality). I like that there's a new enemy that will last for a while, as opposed to a constant stream of "enemy of the week" crap, that get introduced at the beginning of the book, are defeated at the end, and are never seen again.

Personally, I think that they should diversify the EU... it always seems to follow the antics of the Top Dogs seen in the SW movies. There are bound to be millions of possible exciting adventures throughout the galaxy that don't involve Luke, Leia, Han, or any of the others. But we don't hear a peep about 'em (except in the crappy anthology books).

[His Divine Shadow]

Dark Empire, this was the one George Lucas said was his favorite EU story IIRC.
I see no problem with it.

As for the NJO, SBS, Rebel Dream and Rebel Stand are good books, and one can get into the NJO by beginning with SBS.
Dark Journey was so-so but not overly bad.

[Rob Wilson]

The only EU that REALLY REALLY REALLY cheeses me off is the NJO. Don't get me fucking started.

Here, here.

[IDMR]

The only EU that REALLY REALLY REALLY cheeses me off is the NJO. Don't get me fucking started.

::gets you started::

I keep hearing about NJO, but just how bad is it (Apart from the whole idiotic organic Vong concept)? I might buy one if it is really so bad. Of course, I don't own a single star wars book or DVD, so I probably won't buy it anyway.

[His Divine Shadow]

I keep hearing about NJO, but just how bad is it (Apart from the whole idiotic organic Vong concept)? I might buy one if it is really so bad. Of course, I don't own a single star wars book or DVD, so I probably won't buy it anyway.

Get SBS, Rebel Dream and Rebel Stand.
Honestly the two last books are probably two of the best SW books I have read.

And as for the Vong, I think they are good villains, the whole organic superior concept is not there either, they have their weaknesses too, like how they have no communications systems in their coral skippers(fighters).
And they don't use living material as armor either(ala B5) but some form of high capability rock/coral.

[TheDarkling]

The Vong arent really that powerful, the Empire would of hammered them in the first book and held them at bay for the rest of the series but the New Republic let them gain a foot hold and kept backing off.

*****Spoilers For NJO 1-5 (Nothing specific)******


For the first 5 books in the sries the New Republic just sits around and debates after that they try a counter offensive and actually try to take the war to the Vong.

The new Republic defeats its self the Vong simply take advantage.

[Pablo Sanchez]

I completely concur, Captain. Dark Empire cheapened ROJ very much. Not only did it make Anakin's death for nothing, but having Luke fall so deeply back into the Dark Side cheapened his triumph at the end of ROJ.

Well, that's kind of the point. Dark Empire is, simply, dark. The intention is to show that an enemy the size of the Galactic Empire can't be defeated by a single stroke, and that there must be years of hard fighting.

[JJP]

I know many, many people have said it before, but I hate anything touched by Kevin J Anderson. The quality of writing's pretty poor, but it's just the fact that they're so badly thought out and inconsistent with the films that bugs me.

Case in point- the major plot of the Jedi Academy series is the threat of Admiral Daala, with her almighty four star destroyers. In a galaxy of moon sized battlestations and almighty ten mile long battlecruisers, we are expected to believe that four ISDs are a major threat to the republic.

In Darksaber, the title of the book refers to the Deathstar variant the Hutts are building. And what does he do? Spend half the book building up to it and then destroy it before it's ever a threat! Maybe he realised how shite the other half of the plot was and put the whole darksaber thing in to distract us.

Other than him, I like most of the other pre-NJO books. I think all of them suffer from a lack of scale- basically the numbers are far too small.

I liked Timothy Zahn's trilogy, but again he expects us to believe that what should be an insignificant force of 200 Dreadnaughts is incredibly important.

Stackpole's X-Wing books are irritatingly fighter-centric, but pretty well-written.

I loved Dark Empire mainly for the epic depictions of the warfleets around Byss and the wreckages on Coruscant. I thought Dark Empire II deteriorated in quality severely, and the less said about Empire's End the better.

Planet of Twilight is probably the best I've read- it wisely sticks to the Jedi. The droid bits are pretty irritating, but made up for by the genuinely scary bad guy.

[Tycho]

I know many, many people have said it before, but I hate anything touched by Kevin J Anderson. The quality of writing's pretty poor, but it's just the fact that they're so badly thought out and inconsistent with the films that bugs me.

Case in point- the major plot of the Jedi Academy series is the threat of Admiral Daala, with her almighty four star destroyers. In a galaxy of moon sized battlestations and almighty ten mile long battlecruisers, we are expected to believe that four ISDs are a major threat to the republic.

In Darksaber, the title of the book refers to the Deathstar variant the Hutts are building. And what does he do? Spend half the book building up to it and then destroy it before it's ever a threat! Maybe he realised how shite the other half of the plot was and put the whole darksaber thing in to distract us.

Other than him, I like most of the other pre-NJO books. I think all of them suffer from a lack of scale- basically the numbers are far too small.

I liked Timothy Zahn's trilogy, but again he expects us to believe that what should be an insignificant force of 200 Dreadnaughts is incredibly important.

Stackpole's X-Wing books are irritatingly fighter-centric, but pretty well-written.

I loved Dark Empire mainly for the epic depictions of the warfleets around Byss and the wreckages on Coruscant. I thought Dark Empire II deteriorated in quality severely, and the less said about Empire's End the better.

Planet of Twilight is probably the best I've read- it wisely sticks to the Jedi. The droid bits are pretty irritating, but made up for by the genuinely scary bad guy.

About the dreadnaughts...they technically are VERY important. Thats 200 ships of the line extra for you. Ships that you now don't have to free up from their regular duties. That means when you attack, you won't be as open to a counterattack.

And I wouldn't be adverse to having 200 extra ships to throw into an enemy formation...:p

[Guest]

My point is that the number is far too small. It should have been more like 2000. With an Empire that had at least 25,000 star destroyers, 200 dreadnaughts would be utterly piddly, yet in the books they're presented as pivotally important.

[JJP]

Oops, that is my post above, I was logged out for some reason.

Anyway, just to clarify my point, 200 Dreads IS insignificant. The New Republic would have inherited at least a sizable fraction of the Empire's huge industrial capacity, and would have had to have had comparable fleet sizes running into the tens, maybe hundreds of thousands. As such 200 Dreads would be utterly insignificant against them.

[Pablo Sanchez]

My point is that the number is far too small. It should have been more like 2000. With an Empire that had at least 25,000 star destroyers, 200 dreadnaughts would be utterly piddly, yet in the books they're presented as pivotally important.

If you concentrate all 200 of them in a single battlegroup, you can make an impact. Like the Black Fleet Crisis, where the Yevetha had a fair sized fleet. Kube-McDowell was bright enough to know that it still wasn't much threat to an entire galaxy, but they were still a threat because they could achieve local superiority by flooding every ship and fighting the NR piecemeal. There's also the fact that those 200 ships are basically free, because they were captured and are built on Slave Circuits. Thrawn got a whole extra fleet without having to devote much in the way of production or human resources.

[JJP]

In the Black Fleet crisis trilogy, the NR were hampered by the Yevethan political manipulation of the situation, so despite having far superior numbers they were unable to crush them immediately.

In the Thrawn trilogy it was out and out war- there was no holding back. Again I reiterate, 200 dreads would be insignificant for either side having at least a fraction of the industrial capacity that churned out a moon sized battlestation in under six months, worth millions of dreads on its own.

[His Divine Shadow]

It's all about the balance you see, the imps could only spare so many ships for duties on the line, the NR could spare more, but the NR was growing so fast they had to shift ships to other duties, wich left them underpowered at the "line" so to speak.

The balance was shifting in the empires favor already, the NR's size was working against them and for the Empire, for the time being atleast, until they would catch up, the Empire could and would take advantage of it but still it wasn't a big enough difference for the Empire to win, unless they could shift the balance even more, and have some kickass tactics to boot.
And with the infusion of 200 dreadnaughts possibly freeing up ISD's from guard and patrol duties the balance shifted too quickly for the NR.

[His Divine Shadow]

In the Thrawn trilogy it was out and out war- there was no holding back. Again I reiterate, 200 dreads would be insignificant for either side having at least a fraction of the industrial capacity that churned out a moon sized battlestation in under six months, worth millions of dreads on its own.

As said, it's all about the balance, remove those resources from building capital ships, fighters, transports, freighters, infrastructure, bases, defenses etc. and the balance would shift quikcly in the Empires favor who would now be prodcuing more ships for battle than the NR and they would loose.

It was like weighing a scale.

[David]

It's all about the balance you see, the imps could only spare so many ships for duties on the line, the NR could spare more, but the NR was growing so fast they had to shift ships to other duties, wich left them underpowered at the "line" so to speak.

I totally agree with that. If you look at the USA's Civil War, the Union possessed a massive fleet, while the Confederate's was all but none existent. The confederates managed to sneak out one ship and it sunk 1000s of tons of Union shipping. The Union was so busy blockading the coast, they couldn't spare the ships to fight that one lone ship.

[JJP]

Yes, it is about balance, but when you're talking about balances of tens of thousands of ships on each side, what difference will 200 make either way?

In the Civil War you're still talking about only a few ships, where one can make a difference. But scale this up to tens of thousands, and you need far more than just 200 to make a difference.

Look at it this way. 200 Dreads are probably less in terms of volume than a single Executor-Class Command Ship. Do you think a single Executor would be of absolutely paramount importance?

[His Divine Shadow]

Yes, it is about balance, but when you're talking about balances of tens of thousands of ships on each side, what difference will 200 make either way?

In the Civil War you're still talking about only a few ships, where one can make a difference. But scale this up to tens of thousands, and you need far more than just 200 to make a difference.

Look at it this way. 200 Dreads are probably less in terms of volume than a single Executor-Class Command Ship. Do you think a single Executor would be of absolutely paramount importance?

Scale up the battlefield too when those tens of thousands of ships will leave maybe 1-2 ships at each planet or system to defend it and the rest for escort and misc. duty(supply lines must be protected or the enemy will take it from you like a parasite), you're not left over with alot of ships to actually fight, and if you draw resources from other systems they are open to attack, and with the speed of hyperdrive.

[StarshipTitanic]

Each Dreadnaught had 10 heavy turbolasers that seemed to be able to harm (perhaps seriously) a Star Destroyer. I'd say they're a significant force.

[David]

Remember the area that the NR had to control/defend though. By TCoPL the NR had 600,000 member systems. They would have even more later on. That is the way the Rebels had any chance at all. The Empire always outnumbered the Rebels, but the Rebels always concentrated their forces and the Empire had to spread their's out.