Are the Empire's actions legal?

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Re: Are the Empire's actions legal?

Post by Mikey »

Captain Seafort wrote:*Cough*
Atekimogus wrote:So except point 3 [Alderaan] I have to say that the Palpatine Empire isn't even close to an evil empire except the main heroes always telling us that they are or did I miss something?
*cough*
GrahamKennedy, as the title of the OP, wrote:Are the Empire's actions legal?
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Re: Are the Empire's actions legal?

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Deepcrush wrote:The Council of Moffs and Sector Regents that led to the Interim Council that lead to the Council of Moffs that led to the Fel Dynasty... all still a part of the Empire.
The Interim Ruling Council was a completely different body to the Moff Council of the Remnant. It was formed from those members of Palpatine's Advisory Council who didn't travel to (and die at) Endor, led by Sate Pestage (until he legged it to Byss) and Ysanne Isard (until the fall of Coruscant). By this stage it was only the strongest of numerous powerful independent states in the galaxy, including the New Republic and various warlords who'd broken away. After Coruscant it appointed Thrawn Supreme Commander, but the warlords remained independent (hence why Thrawn had the ISD Chimera as his flagship rather than Ardus Kaine's Executor-class Reaper). After Thrawn's defeat it allied with the warlords to retake Coruscant, became the Advisory Council once again under Palpatine's clones, and reverted to the IRC after his final death. After that it attempted to continue, under Carnor Jax and Xandel Carivus, before its final defeat and the arrest of most of its members by the New Republic at Ord Cantrell.

The Remnant's Moff Council was simply pulled together to give the Remnant, formed from Daala's warlord alliance, some of the trappings of the old Empire, but it was a distinctly different body, with its authority derived from Pellaeon as commander of the warlord alliance's military forces, not from Palpatine as elected Galactic Emperor as the IRC did.
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Re: Are the Empire's actions legal?

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Mikey wrote:
Captain Seafort wrote:*Cough*
Atekimogus wrote:So except point 3 [Alderaan] I have to say that the Palpatine Empire isn't even close to an evil empire except the main heroes always telling us that they are or did I miss something?
*cough*
GrahamKennedy, as the title of the OP, wrote:Are the Empire's actions legal?
*COUGH* :P
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Re: Are the Empire's actions legal?

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Captain Seafort wrote:
Deepcrush wrote:The Council of Moffs and Sector Regents that led to the Interim Council that lead to the Council of Moffs that led to the Fel Dynasty... all still a part of the Empire.
The Interim Ruling Council was a completely different body to the Moff Council of the Remnant. It was formed from those members of Palpatine's Advisory Council who didn't travel to (and die at) Endor, led by Sate Pestage (until he legged it to Byss) and Ysanne Isard (until the fall of Coruscant). By this stage it was only the strongest of numerous powerful independent states in the galaxy, including the New Republic and various warlords who'd broken away. After Coruscant it appointed Thrawn Supreme Commander, but the warlords remained independent (hence why Thrawn had the ISD Chimera as his flagship rather than Ardus Kaine's Executor-class Reaper). After Thrawn's defeat it allied with the warlords to retake Coruscant, became the Advisory Council once again under Palpatine's clones, and reverted to the IRC after his final death. After that it attempted to continue, under Carnor Jax and Xandel Carivus, before its final defeat and the arrest of most of its members by the New Republic at Ord Cantrell.

The Remnant's Moff Council was simply pulled together to give the Remnant, formed from Daala's warlord alliance, some of the trappings of the old Empire, but it was a distinctly different body, with its authority derived from Pellaeon as commander of the warlord alliance's military forces, not from Palpatine as elected Galactic Emperor as the IRC did.
All of this operated under Imperial control on and from Imperial worlds by persons still loyal to the Imperial cause. So again, still remains the Empire.
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Re: Are the Empire's actions legal?

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Captain Seafort wrote: The Dark Empire Sourcebook. The plan was to effectively create a pyramid of Force-vampires, each tier draining the life force of those below them, with Palpatine himself at the peak, with the end result that he and the galaxy (or possibly the universe) would effectively be synonyms.
That is just...wow. Who did come up with THAT? Just for interest timelinewise are we talking original Palpatine or one of his clones. (I must admit I never read all the Palpatine clone stories simply because I found it lazy and uninspiring bringing him back, especially after the Thrawn triology showed that their are far better original villains out there.)


Honestly, though, simply by the response you gave to Deepcrush I simply cannot continue discussing with you just because heck I don't recognize half the names you quoted and I do not remember the political details ever being discussed in such detail in any of the novels I read.

Just reading the Thrawn triology for example, I would have never gotten the idea that Thrawn is NOT in command of the whole rest of the Empire and honestly, that he had only a normal Star Destroyer as Flagship I attributed to him being so awesome that he isn't in constant need of ever bigger guns and all the other Super Star Destroyers from later which randomly pop up and are discovered are mainly sci-fi fanboi authors going over the top. With every novel the fleet and star destroyer got bigger and bigger to the point were nothing makes much sense anymore. Thousands of Thousand of star destroyers, yet only a few dozen at Endor etc.etc. . Thrawn Triology seemed more realistic to me.

Since you seem to have deeper insight, a question: What happened to the Empire of the Hand? One novel they are shocked that there is basically a huge second Empire in the unknown regions, far bigger than the Imperial Remnant they know of. Never heard of again, never playing ANY role in one of the following galaxy spanning events.
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Re: Are the Empire's actions legal?

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Deepcrush wrote:All of this operated under Imperial control on and from Imperial worlds by persons still loyal to the Imperial cause. So again, still remains the Empire.
The Remnant is no more the Galactic Empire for those reasons than the US (formed by British citizens, on British territory, deriving the DoI and the Constitution from the principles of English Common Law, Magna Carta and the 1689 Bill of Rights) is the British Empire.
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Re: Are the Empire's actions legal?

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Atekimogus wrote:That is just...wow. Who did come up with THAT? Just for interest timelinewise are we talking original Palpatine or one of his clones.
Both. Full implementation of the plan only really started with Palpatine's resurrection on Byss, but it had been his intention for some time. Whether the intention goes back to the prequel era, or whether he was telling the truth when he implied to Yoda that he intended Vader to succeed him is open to question.
Honestly, though, simply by the response you gave to Deepcrush I simply cannot continue discussing with you just because heck I don't recognize half the names you quoted and I do not remember the political details ever being discussed in such detail in any of the novels I read.
Most of them come up in the various sourcebooks and the like, rather than the novels and comics. I only know about it because some individuals have gone to the effort of collating all this - Wookiepedia is the most well known, but IMO the Domus Publica (sadly no longer extant) was the best.
Just reading the Thrawn triology for example, I would have never gotten the idea that Thrawn is NOT in command of the whole rest of the Empire
Thrawn was Supreme Commander of the Imperial Fleet - effectively Shogun of the Empire at the request of the Council.
honestly, that he had only a normal Star Destroyer as Flagship I attributed to him being so awesome that he isn't in constant need of ever bigger guns and all the other Super Star Destroyers from later which randomly pop up and are discovered are mainly sci-fi fanboi authors going over the top.
I think the opposite actually. Sure, Thrawn was able to achieve a tremendous amount with limited resources, but bigger guns are always a plus, and Thrawn wouldn't have turned them down if he'd had access to them. As for the other Exs, it makes sense that there were plenty around - it's a big galaxy.
With every novel the fleet and star destroyer got bigger and bigger to the point were nothing makes much sense anymore. Thousands of Thousand of star destroyers, yet only a few dozen at Endor etc.etc. . Thrawn Triology seemed more realistic to me.
Again, its the other way round. The fleet at Endor was the strongest force the Empire could assemble without tipping off the rebels, which wasn't much, but should have been ample to deal with the small task force it was confronted with. A full-scale conventional war, such as that between the Empire and the New Republic would realistically have been conducted by the full might of the Empire's core reserve fleets, built around its heaviest combatant, not the light counterinsurgency forces we saw deployed against the Alliance in the films.
Since you seem to have deeper insight, a question: What happened to the Empire of the Hand? One novel they are shocked that there is basically a huge second Empire in the unknown regions, far bigger than the Imperial Remnant they know of. Never heard of again, never playing ANY role in one of the following galaxy spanning events.
Unknown - it's never been covered. It might have been destroyed by an early Vong incursion, it may have been subsumed into the Chiss Empire, or it might be still out there somewhere
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Re: Are the Empire's actions legal?

Post by Atekimogus »

Captain Seafort wrote: I think the opposite actually. Sure, Thrawn was able to achieve a tremendous amount with limited resources, but bigger guns are always a plus, and Thrawn wouldn't have turned them down if he'd had access to them. As for the other Exs, it makes sense that there were plenty around - it's a big galaxy.
That is my point really. You have the movies. You have the Thrawn triology and up to that point imho everything makes sense. But then, novel after novel after novel another superweapon is introduced. Another super-star destroyer flying around and fleets and forces which seem to come out of nowhere and you are suddenly left with the question: "Why were Thrawns resources so damn limited to a couple of Star Destroyers just a few years ago?" Now either he is the damn supreme commander of the fleet or not and despite him spending much time away in the unkown regions the excuse that he just didn't know about all those superweapos lying around doesn't sit well with me, when he knew the location of the very emperors private stash.
Captain Seafort wrote:Again, its the other way round. The fleet at Endor was the strongest force the Empire could assemble without tipping off the rebels, which wasn't much, but should have been ample to deal with the small task force it was confronted with. A full-scale conventional war, such as that between the Empire and the New Republic would realistically have been conducted by the full might of the Empire's core reserve fleets, built around its heaviest combatant, not the light counterinsurgency forces we saw deployed against the Alliance in the films.
Not saying that you are wrong since evidence is on your side if one goes by the novels. Just saying that this is definitly NOT the idea one gets from the Thrawn novels, where they go through great lengths explaining what a huge loss Endor was for the fleet as a whole, that they are therefore on a critical shortage on ships (hence the need for the Katana-dreadnaughts) and that the loss of their flagship also meant that their whole officer-chorps took a huge beating, forcing them to draft less then suitable candidates as is evidenced in the very first paragraph of the very first novel. In fact only the intake of the Katanas enabled Thrawn to have a small tactical flexibility again instead of retreating ever further.

The Thrawn triology paints a believable picture of a star fleet in retreat, which suffered heavy losses and struggles to replace them and considering the need for garison forces one doesn't even question that Thrawn is left with a rather small reaction force at his disposal. This is to be expected after a string of deafeats. At this point in the timeline (not sure when they discovererd the super ISD hidden on coruscant) the reader also is lead to believe that the biggest ship, their flagship, the Executor bit the dust so again, makes sense that he flys around in normal star destroyers (of which there simply aren't so much left anymore and every loss is deeply felt.)

And then come all the other novels introducing huge fleets, superweapons and one freaking Super-ISD after the other. It's just incredibly lazy writing imho. Are we to believe that the very star fleet of the Empire doesn't know about huge portions of their inventory? That every lowly officier and Moff is able to hide away a couple of super-isds just so that they might come in handy later for a power grap? That the supreme commander of the whole damn fleet simply hadn't access to huge portions of the very fleet he is supposed to command? Why then the concentration on ship building and salvaging when instead he could directed his efforts on asserting his command of the very ships he is supposed to be in command of anyhow? A point could probably be made for huge portions of the fleet being tied up with the "fleet in being" concept but this seems unlikely to me.

The novels (afer the Thrawn triology) just are never consistend about that sort of thing. One novel you only need a couple of stardestroyers to conquer a sector and that's why they are so incredibly hard to come by. In the next novel huge fleets of them die like Tie Fighters....no biggie. It seems every author has his or her adamant ideas of how big the fleet is supposed to be and how capable single elements are and they wouldn't give an inch no matter what was written in one of the previous novels.
Captain Seafort wrote:Unknown - it's never been covered. It might have been destroyed by an early Vong incursion, it may have been subsumed into the Chiss Empire, or it might be still out there somewhere
I see....well that is exactly the lazy writing which ultimetely lead to me giving up on the EU novels. As I said, I was blown away by the Thrawn triology and how well they captured the spirit and feeling of the original movies (actually, I like the Thrawn triology probably even better than the movies) but everything after that I read only in the hopes that they might reach that quality again.

I mean introducing a mayor political power on par or even greater than the remnant or republic just to forget completely about them again.......tststs :bangwall:
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Re: Are the Empire's actions legal?

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Considering the amount of power they continued to hold and that many of the outer rim systems stayed with the Empire rather then join onto the NR shows that even many non-humans must have preferred the Empire to their worries of the OR.
Given how utterly corrupt and incompetant the Old Republic is portrayed as in the prequels it's not terribly shocking to me that the rebels are such a fringe group. Say what you want about the Empire, shit got done and it was squared away. So if your choice is between the stability and security of the empire versus some terrorists who killed the duly appointed emperor of the galaxy and want to ressurect that corrput and incompetant government... well who can blame them for staying with the Empire. If I'm honest about it, I'd probably happily stay in the Empire myself if you transplanted my current life into that world.
Maybe that's true but they don't seem to follow a specific chain of command. It's like medival monks being put in charge of a kings armies just because they are monks. No matter, I always found that their self assumed role of "Protectors of the Republic" is extremely fishy. What if the very same republic doesn't want them as protectors anymore? Are we to assume that they would yield their power and just withdraw to meditate and study the force or whatever?
It's not self assumed. They operated completely in the light and with the blessing of the government. They are refered to as agents of the Chancellor/Senate on several occasions and are eventually made the generals of the Republic's army. They are part of the legal government. We don't know the exact relationship they had with the rest of the government but it's clear they were a sanctioned part of it.
With every novel the fleet and star destroyer got bigger and bigger to the point were nothing makes much sense anymore. Thousands of Thousand of star destroyers, yet only a few dozen at Endor etc.etc. . Thrawn Triology seemed more realistic to me.
Not really. We're talking an entire galaxy here. Millions of worlds, trillions of citizens. Just to be able to have a significant military presence for basic policing and security of your worlds would lead to a fleet with millions, probably tens of millions, of ships. Honestly, I'm just not a fan of the numbers used in the Thrawn trilogy. However the losses at Endor are, if I remember correctly, more of a brain drain than a ship drain. That the ships lost were some of the best and took many of the best and most experienced crews down with them.
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Re: Are the Empire's actions legal?

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Mikey wrote:
Captain Seafort wrote:*Cough*
Atekimogus wrote:So except point 3 [Alderaan] I have to say that the Palpatine Empire isn't even close to an evil empire except the main heroes always telling us that they are or did I miss something?
*cough*
GrahamKennedy, as the title of the OP, wrote:Are the Empire's actions legal?
I know the OP was to question the legality of the Empire's actions, but Atekimogus's post did say he didn't see the Empire doing things that were "that bad"...
All the other points were discussed in details by others, and this is the point that raised my eyebrows...
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Re: Are the Empire's actions legal?

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Atekimogus wrote:That is my point really. You have the movies. You have the Thrawn triology and up to that point imho everything makes sense. But then, novel after novel after novel another superweapon is introduced. Another super-star destroyer flying around and fleets and forces which seem to come out of nowhere and you are suddenly left with the question: "Why were Thrawns resources so damn limited to a couple of Star Destroyers just a few years ago?" Now either he is the damn supreme commander of the fleet or not and despite him spending much time away in the unkown regions the excuse that he just didn't know about all those superweapos lying around doesn't sit well with me, when he knew the location of the very emperors private stash.
As I said - most of the warlords were holding onto their best toys rather than let Thrawn play with them. A lot more were being drained away into the Deep Core by Palpatine in preparation for Op SHADOWHAND.
Not saying that you are wrong since evidence is on your side if one goes by the novels. Just saying that this is definitly NOT the idea one gets from the Thrawn novels, where they go through great lengths explaining what a huge loss Endor was for the fleet as a whole, that they are therefore on a critical shortage on ships (hence the need for the Katana-dreadnaughts) and that the loss of their flagship also meant that their whole officer-chorps took a huge beating, forcing them to draft less then suitable candidates as is evidenced in the very first paragraph of the very first novel. In fact only the intake of the Katanas enabled Thrawn to have a small tactical flexibility again instead of retreating ever further.
One of the few big problems with Zahn is his minimalism - a few hundred Dreadnaughts and a cloning facility in a single mountain change the course of the war. The impact of the loss of the Ex isn't so much of a problem, as Pellaeon's thoughts clearly indicate that she took a grossly disproportionate number of the best and brightest of the Empire's up and coming officers, rather than the ship's loss being serious in absolute terms.
The Thrawn triology paints a believable picture of a star fleet in retreat, which suffered heavy losses and struggles to replace them and considering the need for garison forces one doesn't even question that Thrawn is left with a rather small reaction force at his disposal. This is to be expected after a string of deafeats. At this point in the timeline (not sure when they discovererd the super ISD hidden on coruscant) the reader also is lead to believe that the biggest ship, their flagship, the Executor bit the dust so again, makes sense that he flys around in normal star destroyers (of which there simply aren't so much left anymore and every loss is deeply felt.)
The problem with that is that while the Ex-class were among the largest the Empire had, they were far from rare in relative terms (Han pointed out in RotJ that "there are a lot of command ships", in response to Luke's concern that the Ex-class at Endor was the Ex herself). There were also a huge range of smaller ships ships of various types that were nonetheless far larger than the ISD.
And then come all the other novels introducing huge fleets, superweapons and one freaking Super-ISD after the other. It's just incredibly lazy writing imho. Are we to believe that the very star fleet of the Empire doesn't know about huge portions of their inventory? That every lowly officier and Moff is able to hide away a couple of super-isds just so that they might come in handy later for a power grap? That the supreme commander of the whole damn fleet simply hadn't access to huge portions of the very fleet he is supposed to command? Why then the concentration on ship building and salvaging when instead he could directed his efforts on asserting his command of the very ships he is supposed to be in command of anyhow? A point could probably be made for huge portions of the fleet being tied up with the "fleet in being" concept but this seems unlikely to me.
The fact that the warlords weren't letting Thrawn take their ships didn't mean they weren't being used (other than the Deep Core fleets of course), simply that they were insisting on retaining them under their personal command, and merely acting in conjunction with those forces under Thrawn's personal command.
The novels (afer the Thrawn triology) just are never consistend about that sort of thing. One novel you only need a couple of stardestroyers to conquer a sector and that's why they are so incredibly hard to come by. In the next novel huge fleets of them die like Tie Fighters....no biggie. It seems every author has his or her adamant ideas of how big the fleet is supposed to be and how capable single elements are and they wouldn't give an inch no matter what was written in one of the previous novels.
Indeed, and the fact that so many authors have such a poor sense of scale is part of the problem with the EU.
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Re: Are the Empire's actions legal?

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Captain Seafort wrote:
Deepcrush wrote:All of this operated under Imperial control on and from Imperial worlds by persons still loyal to the Imperial cause. So again, still remains the Empire.
The Remnant is no more the Galactic Empire for those reasons than the US (formed by British citizens, on British territory, deriving the DoI and the Constitution from the principles of English Common Law, Magna Carta and the 1689 Bill of Rights) is the British Empire.
Well seeing how one was formed by a population who wished to leave the British Empire and the other was made up of the surviving sectors of the Galactic Empire. The analogy is simply meaningless to topic as such I'll just accept this being as close as you can come admitting you concede the issue.
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Re: Are the Empire's actions legal?

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Deepcrush wrote:Well seeing how one was formed by a population who wished to leave the British Empire and the other was made up of the surviving sectors of the Galactic Empire. The analogy is simply meaningless to topic as such I'll just accept this being as close as you can come admitting you concede the issue.
The precise political situation was different but the overall gist was the same - subdivisions of a larger political entity broke away from central control and later came together to form a new political entity that bore a superficial resemblance to the one they broke away from, but was nonetheless distinct from it.
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Re: Are the Empire's actions legal?

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Captain Seafort wrote: As I said - most of the warlords were holding onto their best toys rather than let Thrawn play with them. A lot more were being drained away into the Deep Core by Palpatine in preparation for Op SHADOWHAND.
Yes you mentioned that and that is were my confusion lies. Who the hell are those Warlords? If you read the Thrawn triology you are under the assumption that Thrawn is the supreme commander of the imperial forces. No Warlords mentioned iirc. (Maybe they are retconnend in one of the following novels?) Since I can hardly imagine that huge parts of the Imperial fleet just say: "Well, he is our duly appointed commander...but frak it, we rather just stay at home/not phoning in that we are still there, I have to assume that the Warlords are not part of the Empire?

Now granted, if the Empire was a place as the Holy Roman Empire of german nation, THEN it would make sense. The Kaiser would have his army which is mostly based on his own household-strength and all the local nobels have their own armies which they might or might not attach to the Kaisers army. (However, even in the Holy Roman Empire saying no the the Kaiser when waging war had consequences, often costly ones). HOWEVER, the Empire seems to be modeled more on one of the dictatorships of mid-20th century. Which means extreme discipline, uniformity, very centralistic, a strict chain of command etc.......so having Warlords as long as the chain of command is reasonable intact seems just so unlikely to me.

Captain Seafort wrote:One of the few big problems with Zahn is his minimalism - a few hundred Dreadnaughts and a cloning facility in a single mountain change the course of the war.
I don't really have a probleme with that to be honest. The scope he adopts for his books is in scale with the movies imho. If we really assume a MUCH bigger imperial fleet consisting of thousands of star ships etc. the movies also start to make not much sense. The rebel force gathered for Endor - which we are led to believe is basically the bulk of what the rebel alliance is able to muster, an all out desperate attack before the DS2 comes online, would simply be a laughable non-issue and prior to their attack they wouldn't even be able to raid or make hit and run attacks with their pitiful force.
Captain Seafort wrote:There were also a huge range of smaller ships ships of various types that were nonetheless far larger than the ISD.
For example? Honestly, most of my ship-knowledge comes from being a huge X-Wing, Tie-Fighter fan from back in the day but as far as I know there really isn't anything in the Imperial arsenal between a ISD2 and a Super-ISD2. ( And just because it is named a Star "Destroyer" doesn't mean that it is in any way, shape or form comparable to real life ocean going destroyers. Heck, the Executor is also a Star Destroyer so clearly this doesn't indicate that there "has" to be something bigger. At's like "starship class" imho. Can mean anything but not necessarily that there has to be a Star Heavy Cruiser or battleship. Also Dreadnaughts are smaller than destroyers so another indicator that our nomenclature is not in use within the Empire).

Captain Seafort wrote:The fact that the warlords weren't letting Thrawn take their ships didn't mean they weren't being used (other than the Deep Core fleets of course), simply that they were insisting on retaining them under their personal command, and merely acting in conjunction with those forces under Thrawn's personal command.
Well it makes sense that he wouldn't replace all his fleets commanders just for the sake of it. Still the thing about him being supreme commander is that he could order them around as he saw fit which means he HAD access to them which would then mean that the fleet was indeed not so big as we are later led to believe and that a few hundred dreadnoughts really made a difference. (iirc the republic (or Solo) assumed that they had far more time to prepare against the Katana-fleet simply because he didn't know about the cloning facility and he assumed that it just would take a while for the Empire to raise the manpower to crew those ships. That simply wouldn't have been such an issue when there are huge Warlord-fleets in reserve roaming around as we are led to believe in following novels.)

Now I am not saying Zahn has it right and all the following novelists are in the wrong (since indeed a far larger starfleet makes probably much more sense for a galaxy-spanning empire), I am just saying that if viewed as a whole the EU doesn't make much sense in that regard and since Zahn had the luxury of being the first I have to attribute this failing to the lazy writing of later authors.

Captain Seafort wrote:Indeed, and the fact that so many authors have such a poor sense of scale is part of the problem with the EU.
Ah well, have you played Empire at War? It's a pretty neat strategy game with pretty much every planet ever mentioned in the EU. (Or at least every planet that is important). There are not so many as you might think, insofar I do not have a problem with the rather smaller scale the movies and Thrawn triology depict. Except the core words there isn't much to write home about as far as developed planets go (rest is wookie so to speak) and since capital ship building seems to be limited to not even a half a dozen dedicated ship-yard worlds....yeah, no trouble buying a smaller scale galaxy.
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Re: Are the Empire's actions legal?

Post by Captain Seafort »

Atekimogus wrote:Yes you mentioned that and that is were my confusion lies. Who the hell are those Warlords? If you read the Thrawn triology you are under the assumption that Thrawn is the supreme commander of the imperial forces. No Warlords mentioned iirc. (Maybe they are retconnend in one of the following novels?) Since I can hardly imagine that huge parts of the Imperial fleet just say: "Well, he is our duly appointed commander...but frak it, we rather just stay at home/not phoning in that we are still there, I have to assume that the Warlords are not part of the Empire?
Yes and no. The warlords were senior Imperial commanders (mostly of sectors, oversectors and independent fleets) who went rogue after Endor (mostly in two waves immediately after Endor and after the fall of Coruscant). They continued to run their areas and fleets on Imperial lines, and continued to fight the New Republic, but also fought the other walords, and the forces still loyal to what remained of the core Imperial government: the Ruling Council. During Thrawn's War they supported his campaigns, but it was a much looser arrangement than it would have been had they still been part of the Empire proper.
I don't really have a probleme with that to be honest. The scope he adopts for his books is in scale with the movies imho.
No it isn't. The movies show the backwaters of the galaxy - the only areas the Rebellion can safely operate in. It's still crawling with Star Destroyers, best shown when Vader was able to deploy something like half a dozen of them over Tatooine at almost no notice, and when the Tyrant was disabled by the Rebel's
black market ion cannon at Hoth.

Moreover, look at the heavy guns of the fleet - the Ex, which utterly dwarfs the ISDs, and the two Death Stars, big enough to produce millions or billions of ISDs from the same resources.
If we really assume a MUCH bigger imperial fleet consisting of thousands of star ships etc. the movies also start to make not much sense. The rebel force gathered for Endor - which we are led to believe is basically the bulk of what the rebel alliance is able to muster, an all out desperate attack before the DS2 comes online, would simply be a laughable non-issue and prior to their attack they wouldn't even be able to raid or make hit and run attacks with their pitiful force.
That was covered in Mothma's briefing in RotJ - "with the Imperial fleet spread throughout the galaxy in a vain effort to engage us..." In a galaxy of hundreds of billions of star systems, and tens of millions of major inhabited systems, the notion of an Imperial fleet of less than hundreds of thousands of Star Destroyers is ludicrous.
For example?
This lot
And just because it is named a Star "Destroyer" doesn't mean that it is in any way, shape or form comparable to real life ocean going destroyers.
No, the fact that it does a destroyer's job (escorting the big ships, establishing a blockade of a fourth-rate shithole like Tatooine, chasing down random smugglers, etc) makes it a destroyer.
Also Dreadnaughts are smaller than destroyers so another indicator that our nomenclature is not in use within the Empire.
Dreadnaught-class heavy cruisers, not dreadnoughts in the sense of the ship type.
Well it makes sense that he wouldn't replace all his fleets commanders just for the sake of it. Still the thing about him being supreme commander is that he could order them around as he saw fit which means he HAD access to them which would then mean that the fleet was indeed not so big as we are later led to believe and that a few hundred dreadnoughts really made a difference. (iirc the republic (or Solo) assumed that they had far more time to prepare against the Katana-fleet simply because he didn't know about the cloning facility and he assumed that it just would take a while for the Empire to raise the manpower to crew those ships. That simply wouldn't have been such an issue when there are huge Warlord-fleets in reserve roaming around as we are led to believe in following novels.)
They weren't just roaming randomly - they were engaging the NR in other areas of the galaxy. It's a big place, and you need a lot of ships to conduct a war the length and breadth of it.
Ah well, have you played Empire at War?
Nope.
Only two things are infinite - the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe: Albert Einstein.
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