Fleet/battle style comparison across universes

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 9:59 pm

Pretty good, though one thing stands out to me in particular.

How do you get 'medium number' and 'medium size'?
Do you mean in comparison to that universe, or others?

Deepcrush · Post by **Deepcrush** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 10:07 pm

That was due to a lack of shields. Fighters could now close on thier targets and get pin point shots in with out having to wait out most of the battle. That and a lot of B5 fighters were built with cap-ships in mind.

Jim · Post by **Jim** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 10:12 pm

Rochey wrote:Pretty good, though one thing stands out to me in particular.

How do you get 'medium number' and 'medium size'?
Do you mean in comparison to that universe, or others?

That was basically my only cross-universe comparison. Ex: the Enterprise is small compared to a Star Destroyer or EA Omega Destroyer (maybe 1/3 the legnth, 1/10 the volume [gross estimate])

Deepcrush · Post by **Deepcrush** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 10:16 pm

I think you did well, you avoided the 'blah is better then your blah' problem.

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 10:28 pm

Okay, but I'd knock 'Wars up to 'Large amounts of large ships'.
The most conservative figure puts it at 25,000.
I'd call that quite a large fleet.

Post by **Captain Seafort** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 10:42 pm

That's 25k bog-standard ISDs. Which is probably a vast understatement since the Old Republic had upwards of 4000 sectorial senators, and the typical Imperial sector fleet had 24 ISDs. That's a minimum of over 90k ISDs without even counting Regonal, Oversector and Strategic forces. Total Galaxy-wide ship numbers, counter everything from Correlian Corvettes up to Star Dreadnaughts were probably in the millions (Sep forces certainly had those numbers during the Clone War, and they didn't have the galaxy's entire industrial output to draw on.

In individual battles Endor was pretty small, with only a reinforced sector group plus Death Squadron, while the Battle of Coruscant had several thousand Separatist ships fighting both the Coruscant Home Fleet and the the 5th Open Circle Fleet.

Monroe · Post by **Monroe** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 5:36 am

Problem in Wars right now is a debate between the authors of the EU. It comes down to what the term 'unit' means. Some authors say it means one, some say it means 5,000. Personally I like the larger numbers, its more realistic.

Zahn, who's book where the 25k is said is a minimalist. Come on now, 300 Dreadnaughts making any difference in a galactic fleet? Minimalists are also to blame for Coruscant having like 100 billion people on it. It should have least several trillion (which is the population of some other city sized planets).

This fight between minimalists and realistic authors is starting to make some ugly contradictions in the EU. The amount of battle droids for example.

I'd like to think that 25k Imperial Star Destroyers means 25k Imperial II Star Destroyers since they were the newest model. 90k normal ones works, 200k Victory, 10k Star Battleships, 100 Super Star Destroyers and so on. Now that would be nice.

Post by **Captain Seafort** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 10:37 am

While Zahn's style certainly implies minimalism, it can be fairly easily solved. The Empire and NR must have had millions of ships each, but if there's constant skirmishing along the entire line there would only be dozens of ships fighting over each system. In those circumstances, the sudden appearance of 200 Dreadnoughts in a single sector would be enough to overwhelm the local NR forces.

Deepcrush · Post by **Deepcrush** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 3:01 pm

Those 200 ships didn't make a overall change in the tide, but it gave him a nice boost against an enemy force that was over pressed for ships as it was. If you have 100k ships and I have 100k ships plus 200 fresh, that means that 200 of you're ships will have to fight 2 on 1 battles from the start. Something like that can turn a tide very quickly if the fighting is speadout across the galaxy. The Battle of Midway is a perfect example of this. 3 US carriers, 8 Japanese carriers. US used larger carriers with more fighters but overall the Japanese had more fighters due to their carrier numbers. Fighters from all 3 US carriers attacked 2 of Japan's carriers. That 8 to 3 count went to 6 to 3 real quick and the US fighters out numbered the Japanese in that little bout 3 to 1. Its important to remember that any advantage no matter how small can be turned into a large advantage by a good commander.

Post by **Captain Seafort** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 3:31 pm

Midway started at 4 Japanese to 3 US, with the Kaga and Akagi carrying similar or superior air groups to the Yorktowns. The US victory was due mainly to luck - they caught the Japanese fleet in the middle of rearming, and the Devastator attack drew the top cover down onto the deck allowing the Dauntless' a relatively simple run at the target.

As for Thrawn's strategy, it was made plain that he was concentrating the Katana-fleet ships around his core Star Destroyer fleet for major attacks, not penny-packeting them along the line.

Granitehewer · Post by **Granitehewer** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 3:34 pm

i was going to supported deepcrush, with a little analysis of soviet combat doctrine on the manchurian front, but then read seaforts' post and when read 'devastator' , imagined something from the star wars universe, cool mental image.....

Deepcrush · Post by **Deepcrush** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 3:39 pm

The Japanese had 8 carriers, though 4 of them were ore transports with planes and were counted as escorts in the fleet documents. You do carry a point about the Devastators and Dauntless' plus luck. But in the end I feel my point still stands. The US was given a chance to take the lead and they took it. A small advantage was turned into a larger one, first by luck, then second by the skill that noticed it and used it.

Post by **Captain Seafort** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 3:43 pm

Deepcrush wrote:The Japanese had 8 carriers, though 4 of them were ore transports with planes and were counted as escorts in the fleet documents. You do carry a point about the Devastators and Dauntless' plus luck. But in the end I feel my point still stands. The US was given a chance to take the lead and they took it. A small advantage was turned into a larger one, first by luck, then second by the skill that noticed it and used it.

True - but the advantage was one of luck, rather than numerical superiority. Yes, the USN pilots had the skill and courage to press home their attacks and take advantage of that luck, but if that luck had been reversed it would have been the Yorktown class on the bottom of the Pacific.

Deepcrush · Post by **Deepcrush** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 3:51 pm

Its important to remember that the largest Japanese carrier only had 60 some aircraft were the standard for the US was more then 100. Plus Midway had two full airwings of its own to add in at around 40 craft each. As soon as the Japanese lost even one carrier, they fell to a numerical disadvantage in the air battle.

Post by **Captain Seafort** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 4:11 pm

The Yorktowns struggled to carry more than 80 aircraft - it was the later Essexs that carried 100+ air groups. Nonetheless, having consulted my sources, numbers conceeded. Specifics are Akagi (54), Kaga (63), Hiryu (54), Soryu (56) vs Yorktown (75), Hornet (79), Enterprise (79) and around 100 on Midway (mostly obsolete). Source: The Encyclopedia of Sea Warfare, Salamanda, 1975.

I maintain, however, that the US victory was due to the luck of finding the Japanese carriers vulnerable, rather than to any numerical issues - if the Japanese had been the ones with that luck they would have won the battle.