Jedi Master Spock wrote:An alliance with Sidious?
They were Sidious's puppets. To them, he was "my Lord." The Trade Federation may be worried that the Republic's members may bring out their individual fleets, or that the Republic has already been developing a fleet in secret (this is true); they may also be worried about the Jedi. Who, frankly, are armed and scary.
But why did they become Sidious's puppets? Because Sidious promised them that he can influence the senate. If they already had the fleet while Republic didn't contacting Sidious for help would have benn unneccesary.
And the last bit about Jedi being "scary", are you kidding me? What the hell is a Jedi supposed to do against a fleet of 3 km battleships unless they have a fleet at their disposal.
Jedi Master Spock wrote:Lasted for three years, during which the Republic went from complete ignorance as to what to do in war and being unwilling to risk non-clones (AOTC) to having a good idea what to do and using non-clones in the fleet.
You of course have evidence that they "didn't know what to do in a war".
Jedi Master Spock wrote:The Empire was a million system strong power, reaching its height twenty five years later. The original Republic, prior to the secession, had a hundred thousand systems; the Empire had an order of magnitude more territory.
It also represents twenty five years of continuous militarization. It's not unusual to dramatically increase the fleet in this era.
Quantify "dramatically" beacuse for the Republic and Trade Federation to construct merley a few thousand ships in 3 years while the Empire could build 60% of DS2 in the same time would mean that the Empire's industrial capacity increased by a factor of ten thousand. That is an unusual increase in 25 years.
Jedi Master Spock wrote:A completely ungrounded claim on two counts. The Empire building a Death Star has little to do with its conventional fleet, and the two sides clearly were not in parity in terms of the massiveness of the fleet.
By all means explain why since Death Star for all intents and purposes is a starship which can blow up planets no less. If anything it will be
more difficult to build beacuse of it's large size and the fact that Death Star is not in mass production. You do know that objects that enter mass production will become cheaper? Yet you claim the exact opposite: that a new type of starship will somehow be cheaper and easier to produce than those already in mass production.
Jedi Master Spock wrote:Just look at the battle of Geonosis. The Republic forces were vastly outnumbered, but emerged victorious, for a variety of reasons. Pound for pound, the droid fleet was much less powerful than the Republic fleet.
Vastly outnumbered? Didn't you hear that Neimodian complaining that the Jedi have amassed a "huge" army? That doesn't sound like fighting an army which you vastly outnumber.
Jedi Master Spock wrote:Not very secret. As a matter of known fact, the architecture of the Imperial government allows for massive secret projects - as you'd know if you read the ANH novelization carefully with an eye towards Imperial government.
Not very secret? Were you paying attention at all when watching the films? No one knew if and where the second Death Star was being built until Palpatine himself allowed a leak. And you forget that even members of Imperial senate like princess Leia worked for the Rebels. So much for "super secret" goverment.
Jedi Master Spock wrote:Which tells us why the Empire continued to militarize. The Rebellion was always present, and working on building their own fleet up.
Exactly therefore the Empire had a lot more ships than 1000. In order to maintain any kind of control in a million systems (and who knows how many uncharted settlements) you need a comparable amount of ships.
Jedi Master Spock wrote:"They could make more" is not an argument that works out. There are a limited number of shipyards designed for the specialized work of warships, and the Empire was already going full bore on militarization.
Not they could. They CAN. The Empire didn't need any specialized shipyards to complete the second Death Star on Endor.
Jedi Master Spock wrote:The only thing you could shift is having the Empire not build Death Stars and instead develop more shipyard capacity.
Here you go again making stuff up. They obviously built shipyards during the clone wars and since they could build DS2 in secret and in a place of their choosing the DS2 obviously did not impair their industry.
Do you think U.S. can arbitrarily choose a place on their coast and build an aircraft carrier all the while keeping it a secret from enemy spies.
Nonamer wrote:As an aside question: Does the ability of the Empire to build Death Stars really mean it could build millions of capital ship? Just because the bulk material mass of a Death Star is the same as countless millions of ships doesn't mean they are the same in terms of cost. For instance, the US can product 100 million tonnes of steel a year. That is the material mass of 1,000 Aircraft Carriers. Does it mean the US can afford 1,000 Aircraft Carriers a year? Absolutely not. At a cost of about $5 billion each, such a massive contruction attempt will rapidly bankrupt the US Government, not to mention supporting 1,000 new ships a year. Obviously there is some disconnect between actual production capacity and the usage of construction materials.
This is a completley false analogy. Death Star is not a lump of metal but a fully functional
starship. It has hyperdrive, sublight propulsion, turbolasers, shields just like any other starship. And to top it all off it has a big honking superlaser to blow up planets. To suggest that this new starship will somehow be easier to build than your usual ISD is simply ridiculous.
Mike DiCenso wrote:While you can argue for absolute secrecy for the construction of DS2, the construction of the DS1 was not such a closely guarded secret that the Rebellion could not discover it on their own. The Rebels had to have been tipped off that something was going on, and one possible way is that someone, somewhere probably found out about the massive expenditures the Death Star project required, and alerted the Alliance's agents.
The secrecy of DS2 construction is all I need to prove the Empire's industrial capacity. As for DS1 we know that Rebels had spies in imperial senate no less. This will undoubtedly play a part in revealing it's existence.
Mike DiCenso wrote:Remember Han's comment in ANH? "It's too big to be a space station."
Oh I remeber his comments: "the Empire can't destroy a planet", "you can trust Lando" etc. Forgive me if I don't take his word at face value all the time.
Mike DiCenso wrote:Also, it's been brought up before, and it'll be brought up again. If you allow millions of Imperial starships because of the Death Stars, then you probably have to do a similar thing for the Federation since we have seen that they have the industrial capacity to build a fair number of multi-km space stations (Starbase 74, the Utopia Planita space stations, ect) that are each worth thousands of Galaxy or Sovereign class starships in volume and mass. Just because the Federation has built those stations does not necessarily mean they have hundreds of thousands of GCS and SCS flying around. The same is true for the Galactic Empire. So just because they can do something, doesn't automatically mean they have or will do it.
We already had this discussion and I already pointed out those largest Federation stations are just that: stations. Which have no impulse engines, no warp engines, never demonstrated any shielding and no weaponry. This cannot be compared to Death Stars which are starships and more.
Not to mention that there are huge open spaces inside those stations which would reduce their actuall mass even further.
AnonymousRedShirtEnsign wrote:Industrial capacity is overrated for the sake of this argument. If the Federation's industrial capacity were to suddenly become a million times greater, the number of ships it could build wouldn't change immediately. This is because you need shipyards to build ships at. So the notion of the Empire transferring all of its resources from the Death Star project to fleet production is absurd, since they still only have the same ship building facilities. They would eventually build enough ship yards with to make a difference, but that would take a while.
Funny how the Empire didn't need any shipyards to build the DS2. It floated alone in space if you recall. Why do you think they will need some specialized shipyards to build much more smaller and mundane ships? Please provide evidence that Death Star absorbed even a noticeable fraction of the Imperial industry since they could keep the project a secret. Can you imagine U.S. building 3 aircraft carriers in secret?
AnonymousRedShirtEnsign wrote:And Kane, the incorrect notions you speek of are actually a combination of your erroneous knowledge and faulty reasoning, as Jedi Master Spock has shown.
His only answer was more faulty reasoning and since you are here why don't you answer the point he avoided: that we saw that Republic members even as small as Naboo maintained their own fleets. Obviously other members had them too depending on their size.