Best/Worst military forces in Science Fiction

[Daefaron]

Yeah, Empire cared more for overwhelming numbers and intimidation then effectiveness, as I mentioned in last post.

I know full well the AT-TE and LAAT's (Among other vehicles) were designed after the original trilogy in real life, but they were effective and really, there was no reason to retire them at all. So the Empire going "Oh, this reminds people of the Republic, we gotta remove it!" is very much stupid. I'll take AT-TE and LAAT's over an AT-AT any day.

Then again, I'm stupid and I think 'retiring' a ship or vehicle should mean put some in museums, halt production, but still use all the ones deployed/currently being made until they are more effort to repair then to simply take apart for spare parts.

Man, imagine the battles if instead of using crappy Tie fighters, they had ARC-170's, V-wings, and Torrent fighters. If instead of the slow, easily tripped AT-AT's, they had AT-TE's there (or, AT-TE's supporting the AT-AT's). Imagine if the Empire hadn't just left many Venators to drift in space for no good reason, and kept the ones they had still in good condition.

[Batman]

They'd have a lot of Venators lying around they have no use for? What can the Venators do that ISDs can't?
TIE fighters were easily capabable of holding their own against the X and Y wings in ANH.

[Metahive]

They'd have a lot of Venators lying around they have no use for? What can the Venators do that ISDs can't?

Launch more fighters faster. Considering that the main strength of the Rebel Alliance were its fighters this is an invaluable asset.

[Batman]

And the Alliance had all of thirty of those to throw against the Death Star. Somehow, I doubt the Empire was in any danger of being overwhelmed by floods of Alliance starfighters.

[Ford Prefect]

And the Alliance had all of thirty of those to throw against the Death Star. Somehow, I doubt the Empire was in any danger of being overwhelmed by floods of Alliance starfighters.

Except a handful of fighters destroyed both of the Empire's planet destroying battlestations and brought down the Empire, so ...

[Batman]

The first time requiring the vast majority of TIE fighters remaining in their berths thanks to Tarkin's arrogance, Luke to make the one in a million shot, and Han to show up at the last moment to allow hom to do it.
Since the problem wasn't that the DS1 didn't have sufficient TIE fighters to wipe the Rebels out of the sky, Tarkin just couldn't be arsed ro release them, what difference would a load of Venators have made?

[weemadando]

Babylon 5 dumbness again:

S1E02

Sinclair delays critical action (stopping a disabled ship from hitting the station) while he goes to the hangars, suits up and launches to go and do it personally AND SOLO.

[Batman]

[quote="Destructionator XIII"]That's basically the thrust of my argument: the Imperial military sucks due to people issues. I don't think tech makes much of a difference at all, either way.[/quote
Tech makes a hell of a difference when we're talking orders of magnitudes of difference in performance.
And at no point did I intimate the Imperial Military are actually good.I agree with a lot of your points about how the handling of personell problems is...somewhat subobtimal. My main contention was your claim the Wars nilitary being the worst SciFi military in SciFi, and I'm sorry, you're wrong.

[Stofsk]

Babylon 5 dumbness again:

S1E02

Sinclair delays critical action (stopping a disabled ship from hitting the station) while he goes to the hangars, suits up and launches to go and do it personally AND SOLO.

if only they had a tractor beam

TIE fighters were easily capabable of holding their own against the X and Y wings in ANH.

If that's the case why didn't those TIE fighters prevail and how come the Rebels beat them back? The only TIE pilot who had great success in almost stopping the Rebel attack was Vader - all the others may have scored a couple of hits but were ultimately cleared out. The Rebels also worked together and covered each other - Luke saved Biggs, Wedge saved Luke, and so on, while the only TIE pilot who had the advantage of wingmen covering him was Vader.

It's not just about technological differences (which the EU even calls in favour of the Rebels anyway) but also tactics and teamwork. The Rebels had it, the Imps didn't. The Rebels had a battleplan to take advantage of the Imps' weaknesses, were highly motivated and coordinated, while the Imps held back and scoffed at the notion that snubfighters posed any serious threat.

[the atom]

That's basically the thrust of my argument: the Imperial military sucks due to people issues. I don't think tech makes much of a difference at all, either way.

How exactly was Tarkin supposed to know that one of the Rebel pilots was being guided by what amounted to space Jesus? He'd have never made that shot otherwise.

Anyways regarding your main argument, have you ever heard the of UNSC per chance?

[Blayne]

Babylon 5 dumbness again:

S1E02

Sinclair delays critical action (stopping a disabled ship from hitting the station) while he goes to the hangars, suits up and launches to go and do it personally AND SOLO.

Sinclair is arguably the most qualified pilot among his entire roster, it would make sense for him to go; the reason reason to do it alone is if there was a danger of him not coming back however, or if there was no reason to have others, did he destroy the ship or try to nudge it away?

[Stark]

Uh, didn't like 5 TIEs wipe out the entire attacking force of 30+?

[Sea Skimmer]

We saw six at once, and then Vader's three, but on the other hand I don't think you can ever count all thirty rebel fighters even in the newer versions, so its reasonable to assume more were launched and fought unseen. Given that only three rebel fighters escaped, at least one of which broke off the attack damaged, and that Luke would have died if not for the Falcon, and that surface gunfire was almost totally ineffective even against head on targets, it is logical to conclude the TIEs were knocking down the rebels left and right.

[Stark]

Even accepting that their run down the trench was suicide, I think the TIEs performed pretty well without their BELIEF IN FINAL VICTORY or LIBERALISM TEAMWORK. :V I guess the movie only follows about a dozen rebel fighters, but they only kill a few TIEs and get totally wiped out so I think they did pretty well.

Doesn't impact the command level failures, but describing the TIE deployment as haphazard, lacking in coordination or ineffective doesn't seem very fair.

[Blayne]

That's basically the thrust of my argument: the Imperial military sucks due to people issues. I don't think tech makes much of a difference at all, either way.

Anyways regarding your main argument, have you ever heard the of UNSC per chance?

Are you positing that the UNSC is the *worst* depicted Sci-Fi military in terms of organization, training, tactics and equipment? Have you missed the last few pages where we discussed and refuted most of the criticisms of it?

[lPeregrine]

The tng movies suck.

So what you're saying is that the Federation is competent, as long as you ignore the cases where they display hilarious levels of incompetence. Makes perfect sense to me...

[Daefaron]

And the Alliance had all of thirty of those to throw against the Death Star. Somehow, I doubt the Empire was in any danger of being overwhelmed by floods of Alliance starfighters.

Actually, an early attack against the Death Star by the Rebels involved 500 x-wings and an old droid control ship(the lucrehulk or whatever it's called). In that case, Tarkin used the super-laser against the carrier, and actually launched all tie fighters from the Death Star and the escorting fleet to overwhelm the rebels.

About the Venators, they could've been converted into pure carriers(Or, used as carriers while retaining their current weapons, hell they had the fighter control bridge already), allowing the ISD and newer ships to focus more on weapons then fightercraft. We know the Fifth fleet of the open circle fleet had at minimum, 1000+ Venator class star destroyers. At that's at the end of the Clone Wars basically. Assuming the other Republic fleets held similar numbers, that's a shitton of ships they just retired/junkyarded/abandoned in space. A shitton of Effective ships.

Again, in something like the Empire, it's very easy to find use for AT-TE's, Venators, ARC-170s, etc, besides abandoning them, retiring/tossing them into junkyards and museums, and sending to the utmost edges of the Empire like a "Oh we don't want you around. Go patrol the ass-end of space."

Edit: In New hope, Tarkin was massively arrogant. He went after the rebels with any escorting fleets, didn't launch the entire Tie fighter complement...

Oh, I'd say the 30 or so Starfighters was the ones garrisoned there, not an example of the entire rebel military at the time.

[Stofsk]

Even accepting that their run down the trench was suicide, I think the TIEs performed pretty well without their BELIEF IN FINAL VICTORY or LIBERALISM TEAMWORK. :V I guess the movie only follows about a dozen rebel fighters, but they only kill a few TIEs and get totally wiped out so I think they did pretty well.

Doesn't impact the command level failures, but describing the TIE deployment as haphazard, lacking in coordination or ineffective doesn't seem very fair.

Why? I'm only going by what I saw onscreen. TIEs didn't fight with wingmen, which is what the Rebels used to defeat them. Luke covered Biggs, and Wedge covered Luke; comparatively, nobody covered any of the TIEs who went up against the X-wings.

The problem is a lot of the fight presumably was fought off-screen, where anything could have happened. We only ever see half a dozen TIEs; was that the sole number of TIEs that went up, like you imply? Dialogue implies 30+ fighters, but do we ever see that number from the Rebel side? Saying 'didn't like 5 TIEs wipe out the entire attacking force of 30+?' isn't really supported by the film. Nor did they get totally wiped out either - Red leader was still able to make his run, and so did Luke and his wingmen. Hell when Luke's turn came up, he and Wedge and Biggs seemed to be just chilling, they weren't fighting any TIEs at that stage. If the Rebels had two dozen other fighters off-screen, they may also have bought the x-wings from Red squadron enough time to make two separate trench runs. In which case, how could it be said that the TIE response was effective? Incidentally no TIEs were in the air to prevent Han from saving the day either.

[Daefaron]

The only Evidence of the Rebel numbers being wiped out would be at the end, where I think two x-wings, and one or two y-wings are flying back with the falcon.

Of course, since it's doubtful all the fighters were in red and yellow squadron (wasn't yellow the y-wing one?), the other groups may have bugged out and withdrawn once the enemy ties were defeated and the trench runs started.

[lord Martiya]

Now, Tarkin (or whoever was in charge of this decision) *did* launch fighters, and *did* have the guns fire. But, the effort seemed rather poor and a little haphazard. When Darth Vader decided to launch, didn't he just pull two random people out of the hall... Did anybody else know what his plan was?

Novelization answer to this. Tarkin and the rest of the Empire expected the Rebellion to try and hide behind a planetary shield, defensive platforms, a few capital ships and ground batteries while buying time for evacuation (incidentally something very similar to what they did on Hoth: hid behind a theatre shield and a powerful ground-based ion cannon capable of crippling an ISD with a few shots while buying time for evacuation), and their plan was just to bring the DS in superlaser range and blow up Yavin IV alongside the planet and its defenses, with the anti-ships turbolasers in place to deal with a possible capital ship attack. The Empire just didn't consider fighters a danger for the complete station, so they didn't add point defense batteries.
Now the Rebels attack with a small number of fighters. Tarkin's reaction is to just ignore them: they aren't a danger, and the anti-ship batteries will wipe them out, eventually (and they did shoot down at least one fighter). Complacence? Sure. Incompetence? Nope.
Vader's reaction is to send out the fighters under his personal command: he's a starfighter pilot and knows well what a lucky (or exceptionally capable) shot could do, so better make sure the Rebels won't be able to try it. And when he finally realizes what's their target he gets his wingmen and goes ambushing the trench run (something that would have worked if Luke didn't had the Force with him and the Falcon covering him). Complacence? No. Incompetence? No. Just insufficient command authorizations and the ludicrously bad luck of having both a freighter with military weapon firing on his arse and one of his wingmen panicking and colliding with him.

[Blayne]

I think part of Picard's 180 is that the planets radiation was probably making him feel younger and more energetic, and youth brings with it idealism that in his old age and grief was sorely lacking. It was his opportunity to do something right as he no longer has a family in which to be his legacy.

[PainRack]

Seriously...... WTF.

I do know there been constant revision of the Death Star material, and the latest Death Star novel doesn't help things out either, but some of the stuff here is...... disturbingly wrong.

We know that in the Battle, only Darth Vader personal squadron/fighters were launched. There has been differences between how many fighters exactly and how he got the pilots, but the TIEs launched were outnumbered by the Rebel starfighters.

Tarkin was overconfident, but then again, its arguable just how well prepared the Death Star was in the first place, since it was on its shakedown cruise. Indeed, the scientist Bevel Lemelisk got off the Death Star after Aldeeraan and before Yavin. Could Tarkin has gathered more resources? Why? The novelisation and other stuff made it clear that the Rebels actual military resources were weak. Newer material has constantly revisied and improved their ability, but from the bare miminalist reading of the ANH novelisation, Motti and Tagge are talking about fighter pilots and them representing the main threat of the Rebel Alliance. Snubfighters alone.

Meanwhile, we learn from WEG and etc that the Empire, based on their experiences in the Clone Wars has begun to dismiss snubfighters, and General Dodonna tells us that their official doctrine says a snubfighter is a threat only against another snubfighter. And the thing is, it was invulnerable, if not for that weak spot that required a difficult shot. And would had required hundreds, if not thousands of snubfighters to break through the extant Death Star TIE garrison and etc. Now, to this day, I mention that based on Qorl statement of we launched all available fighters in Young Jedi Academy series, the Death Star was not fully manned. It made sense afterall. It blew up Despraye, picked up its extant security forces and transited to Alderaan shortly on its shake down cruise. There is no reason to actually believe that the Death Star contained the thousands of TIE that should had been its official complement.

So, once that is made, it essentially boils down to people arguing that Tarkin was arrogrant and overconfident of the Rebel Threat. Its not the first time such an admiral/governer exists, and it was a strange concordance of events that gave the Rebels the lucky chance it needed to triumph.


The only real issues that has popped up is the Empire doctrine post Clone Wars, where they began to dismiss snubfighters and what we see of the Republic success with snubfighters during the war itself.

[the atom]

That's basically the thrust of my argument: the Imperial military sucks due to people issues. I don't think tech makes much of a difference at all, either way.

Anyways regarding your main argument, have you ever heard the of UNSC per chance?

Are you positing that the UNSC is the *worst* depicted Sci-Fi military in terms of organization, training, tactics and equipment? Have you missed the last few pages where we discussed and refuted most of the criticisms of it?

You mean all that feeble bleating about how the Assault rifle totally has iron sights that aren't seen or described in any Halo thing ever? I did indeed read most of it. It didn't cover their massively shitty vehicle design, shittier infantry weapons that are greatly out-preformed by Cold-war era Soviet gear, and overall face-palm inducing strategic and tactical stupidity (yes, the Tip of the Spear charge was pretty fucking stupid, and there's a reason cavalry charges became out-dated back in WW1).

No, they weren't at peace for 200 years, and no, diverting most of their resources to space combat still isn't an excuse, because again, even cold-war era weapons and armour are still much better then their UNSC equivalent, and fuckups like the Tip of the Spear assault could be avoided by glancing at a couple history textbooks.

Overall, I would not call it much of a stretch to say that the Federation could kick their asses on the ground.

[lPeregrine]

So, bottom line, is this a failure of Starfleet culture? I'd say no.

The failure of culture is that the rebellion happened at all. We're talking about the flagship of the Federation here, not some random bunch of newbies on their first mission. The captain sees no problem in defying the chain of command when he (for incredibly stupid reasons*) decides that he doesn't like Federation policy, and the entire crew supports him. They're willing to completely abandon the chain of command and ignore legal orders to follow this act of rebellion, so the problem goes way beyond a single rogue officer.

And then of course there's the battle. Why back off to a safe distance and call Starfleet Command when you can send the flagship of the Federation into a battle that you can only win through yet another technobabble gimmick? If that gimmick hadn't worked as they'd hoped (not an unreasonable doubt, given it was an untested theory), the Enterprise would have been destroyed for nothing.



*The "ethical dilemma" presented in the movie is absurdly easy to answer: relocate the few people on the planet, harvest the magic. Picard is an idealistic idiot who should have spent the rest of his life in prison for his actions.

==============================================================

And besides, Generations is the better example anyway. Let's review the incompetence here:

1) Sending the captain of the ship down alone to deal with the missile. Besides the obvious "just shoot it from orbit" (a rather easy choice when the only life in the area seems to be a mass-murdering criminal), where is the security team? Where are the heavy weapons? Why even risk the captain of the ship at all when all you need is some random marines to bring in a lone criminal? Either Federation policy is unbelievably stupid, or the crew of the Federation flagship are unbelievably incompetent.

2) Failing to destroy a single obsolete Bird of Prey**. What does the second-in-command of the Federation flagship do when an enemy figures out how to get through his shields? Remain calm, remember his training, and simply return fire and destroy the enemy with a few well-aimed shots? Of course not, that would be too sensible. Instead, he panics, forgets that his ship has weapons, and gets the flagship of the Federation destroyed. And, despite this stunning display of incompetence, he still keeps his rank and position. If Starfleet had even a minimal level of competence, this would have been a career-ending failure.

3) Failing to have any kind of plan in the nexus. Ok, so you're the captain of the flagship of the Federation, and you're trapped in the magic plot device of the week movie. Time doesn't matter, and you can leave the plot device and return to reality at any point you like. Do you:

a) Return to the moment when the mass-murdering criminal was first rescued and put a bullet phaser shot in his head before he can harm anyone, effortlessly resolving the problem with no risk of failure?

b) Find some former soldiers in the magic plot device, assemble an elite squad (using your unlimited time to prepare for your mission), and attack the mass-murdering criminal with overwhelming force until he is dead or stunned?

c) Find a single fellow captain, return to reality at the last minute before disaster, and attack with no apparent plan besides "let's get him"?

Naturally Picard chooses option c, the most incompetent one. Either he's unwilling to make the sacrifice of stranding himself in the past to shoot Soran at the most convenient time, and/or he's so blinded by hero worship that his entire plan consists of "meet Kirk, and be awesome together". Nowhere in his actions do we see anything remotely resembling the kind of leadership or strategic ability that we would expect to see from the captain of the Federation's flagship.


And just to add insult to injury, let's not forget that this is the crew of the Federation flagship. Given that we can reasonably expect them to be some of the best in the Federation, hand-picked for such a prestigious assignment, what does that say about the level of incompetence that must exist elsewhere in Starfleet?




**Remember, Kirk ~100 years earlier (ST3) outgunned it by such a huge margin that when the cloaking ambush failed the Klingon captain expected to be immediately destroyed with zero chance of victory.

[Daefaron]

Are you positing that the UNSC is the *worst* depicted Sci-Fi military in terms of organization, training, tactics and equipment? Have you missed the last few pages where we discussed and refuted most of the criticisms of it?

You mean all that feeble bleating about how the Assault rifle totally has iron sights that aren't seen or described in any Halo thing ever? I did indeed read most of it. It didn't cover their massively shitty vehicle design, shittier infantry weapons that are greatly out-preformed by Cold-war era Soviet gear, and overall face-palm inducing strategic and tactical stupidity (yes, the Tip of the Spear charge was pretty fucking stupid, and there's a reason cavalry charges became out-dated back in WW1).

No, they weren't at peace for 200 years, and no, diverting most of their resources to space combat still isn't an excuse, because again, even cold-war era weapons and armour are still much better then their UNSC equivalent, and fuckups like the Tip of the Spear assault could be avoided by glancing at a couple history textbooks.

Overall, I would not call it much of a stretch to say that the Federation could kick their asses on the ground.

Again, Contact Harvest. Describes the Assault Rifle as having Hidden iron sights. Fail on your end. I constantly hear about how their weapons are outperformed, and don't see anybody noticing "Oh wait, this is a video game developer, NOT military masterminds!" And also, you know, peacetime mentioned below. And you know, I'm pretty sure that the AR is more reliable then an AK-47, and their body armor is better. The Scorpion tank really is the 'weakest' link. But that's because compared to others, it's more of a light tank instead of a MBT. Try putting modern tanks against the Grizzly.

So, what would you have done in Tip of the Spear? Just curious. And Yes, they were at peace, or a near-perfect peace for a very long time. The whole colonization phase where they did little to no weapons development or Research. The only time they started doing it again heavily was when the rebels appeared, a long time after the colonization happened.

I'd call it a MASSIVE stretch to say the Federation could beat them on the ground. The Federation's biggest gun is a rifle, they have no air support or real vehicle support. They have zero personal armor. Their tactics are even worse then whatever you say the Halo tactics fail at.


Again, if you have questions, like "Does the Assault Rifle really have iron sights?" or "Does the UNSC even have artillery". Ask me. If I can't answer, I can pass it on to somebody who knows even more of the lore then I do.