Fleet sizes

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Fleet sizes

Post by AnonymousRedShirtEnsign » Thu Aug 24, 2006 4:45 am

What are the approximate fleet size estimations for the federation and the empire (other factions too if you want). Please include at least a basic overview of how you came to your conclusion.

I think the federation has around 10,000 active ships in service, or is at least capable of fielding that many in a time of crisis. During the Dominion war, the Federation had at least 12 fleets, most of which had around a thousand ships upon mobilization. Some of these were Klingon ships, but during the middle of the war they only had ~1500 ships (the Dominion and its affiliates had ~30,000), and the number of Romulan ships seen in the battle sequences is at best on par with the Klingon ship count. Also the final assault on Cardassia was expected to result in thousands of ships lost on the AQ/ BQ alliance's part.

I'd say the Empire has a thousand, maybe two-thousand ISDs and a few SSDs (of which the Executor is probably the biggest, I'm thinking custom job ships for fleet admirals and Vader gets the pick of the litter). The fleet at Endor seemed to be a considerable fleet for the Empire to field and it only consisted of about 30 or 40 ships, and was, according to Adm. Ackbar more than enough to handle the entire rebel fleet at point blank range. Since we see no smaller ships or older ships or anything other than ISDs and one SSD in the imperial navy, I assume that they don't use anything between and ISD and a shuttle. This naval uniformity is backed up by the PT, in both AotC and RotS we see one class of republic vessel in each.

So basically I give ship count to the Federation, but volume and troop count to the Empire.

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Post by Enterprise E » Thu Aug 24, 2006 2:00 pm

An EU book "Spectre of the Past" by Timothy Zahn, the only resource I know of that gives us an official ship count for the GE, says that the GE at its height had around 25,000 Star Destroyers. Whether that is just Imperial Star Destroyers, or whether that includes the Victory and now the Venator class Star Destroyers is unknown, but I do believe that it does include the other classes of Star Destroyers as well. There would also have to be support vessels for the fleet as well in the form of medium and light cruisers. From what I remember, in the EU, the Galactic Empire had Carrack Cruisers, a light cruiser, the Corellian Corvettes, Nebulon B and B2 (in the TIE Fighter series) frigates, the Dreadnaught, an Interdictor Cruiser for pulling ships out of hyperspace (not really effective here) and the rare Lancer Frigates for dealing with starfighters. I do believe that the Imperial fleet is far larger than the Federation fleet alone, but many of the support vessels are a much lesser threat (especially against fast and maneuverable Federation ships) than the Star Destroyers and other heavier ships, where in Starfleet, the difference in strength between main capital ships seems to be much less than what it is between the Star Destroyers (ISD, Vic SD and Ven SD) and other vessels. As for the Federation fleet, 10,000 capital ships sounds about right. As for the Klingons, they had about 1,500 ships by the end of the Dominion War. The Romulans probably had at least that much, but probably higher. I would say between 2,000 and 3,000 ships. However, those numbers may have to be amended since it seems as if the Romulans lost more ships in the final battle against the Dominion than the Federation or the Klingons.

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Post by Jedi Master Spock » Fri Aug 25, 2006 1:02 am

I've always considered the 25,000 a reasonable estimate, but even in the EU, for the most part, the Star Destroyers make up the backbone and most of the muscle of the fleet. For the purposes of debate, we can essentially ignore the rest of the Imperial fleet - they're only significant if you're one of the people who is setting up curbstomp scenarios.

The only potentially problematic part comes when we consider it as a natural outgrowth of the Old Republic's navy, which initially had a large number of clones as pilots, marines, etc. If you stick 10,000 clones per Star Destroyer, and run with the most recent EU figures, you get ~300 ships. Here I reasonably bracket the Imperial fleet (from the movies alone) as being 1,000-50,000 SDs plusy no more than a million unseen and unsung small vessels.

See why me start to see normal humans as line crew in ROTS? Even then, with on the general order of ~1,000 clones on each ship as marines and pilots, we're still looking at only a few thousand ships at the end of the Clone Wars.

Frankly, I'm inclined not to grow the Imperial navy by that much, but if you are going to consider the EU, the movies are flexible enough to accept 25,000 SDs.

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Post by Enterprise E » Fri Aug 25, 2006 2:47 am

I always viewed the Nebulons and the other ships as system patrol ships myself, with the Star Destroyers being the ships of the line. You may see some of the smaller ships in some battles, but from what we know, both in the movies and the EU, the main players will be the Star Destroyers. Take them out, and the Imperial fleet has no real chance of winning the battle.

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Re: Fleet sizes

Post by Mike DiCenso » Fri Aug 25, 2006 8:05 pm

AnonymousRedShirtEnsign wrote:

I think the federation has around 10,000 active ships in service, or is at least capable of fielding that many in a time of crisis. During the Dominion war, the Federation had at least 12 fleets, most of which had around a thousand ships upon mobilization. Some of these were Klingon ships, but during the middle of the war they only had ~1500 ships (the Dominion and its affiliates had ~30,000), and the number of Romulan ships seen in the battle sequences is at best on par with the Klingon ship count. Also the final assault on Cardassia was expected to result in thousands of ships lost on the AQ/ BQ alliance's part.



A few things here. The Federation has up to ten known fleets (though there are indications on graphic displays of many more) based on dialog from several episodes. The highest numbered fleet was the 10th fleet, mentioned in "In a Pale Moon Light" as the fleet tasked with protecting Betazed, but was caught off-guard during training maneuvers. The lowest referenced fleet is the 2nd fleet, mentioned and shown at the end of "A Call to Arms". The size of the fleets? We know from "To Favor the Bold", and "Sacrifice of Angels", that "elements" of the 2nd and 5th fleets to form a larger fleet of some 627 starships. By the use of the word elements, we might reasonably surmise that the numbers of starships involved did not include the entirety of their base fleets, thus 313 starships would be a lower number for those two fleets, if that were true.

A very lower limit for the fleet numbers appears to be 112, based on the dialog in "A Time to Stand" about the 7th fleet's casulties. However, even this isn't clear if this was the main part of the 7th or not as the 7th fleet is later described in "The Reckoning" as taking heavy losses, and 7th is mentioned again in "Afterimage" as launching a counteroffensive against the Cardassians. This indicates that even if the 7th was only 112 some-odd starships in strength, the Federation had enough starships or the capacity to build new starships to maintain that fleet's strength throughout the war.

As for the 1,500 starship number for the Klingons towards the end of the war, let's put it in it's proper context: that was the number of Klingon vessels, according to General Martok, that could be ready in a day with the new anti-Breen energy draining weapon modifications, not the entirety of the Klingon forces as a whole. So that is a lower limit for the Klingons after more than 3 years of fighting the Federation in skirmishes, and later the Dominion in all out war. The fact that the Dominion/Breen/Cardassian alliance had some 30,000 ships seems to indicate similar numbers for the Federation/Klingon/Romulan alliance, possibly roughly evenly divided in total ship count among them. The fact that the Federation and it's allies were strong enough to push several times into Cardassian territory, even to the point of pushing the Domion back to Cardassia itself, even before the defection of the Cardassian fleet ("What You Leave Behind"), indicates perhaps a marginal advantage in ship count.
I'd say the Empire has a thousand, maybe two-thousand ISDs and a few SSDs (of which the Executor is probably the biggest, I'm thinking custom job ships for fleet admirals and Vader gets the pick of the litter). The fleet at Endor seemed to be a considerable fleet for the Empire to field and it only consisted of about 30 or 40 ships, and was, according to Adm. Ackbar more than enough to handle the entire rebel fleet at point blank range. Since we see no smaller ships or older ships or anything other than ISDs and one SSD in the imperial navy, I assume that they don't use anything between and ISD and a shuttle. This naval uniformity is backed up by the PT, in both AotC and RotS we see one class of republic vessel in each.



If we really wanted to, we could use Han's ANH statements to make the Imperial Starfleet ~1000 vessels strong. After all, you could surmise that the Death Star project took most of the resources from the Imperial navy that might overwise have gone into building tens of thousands, or even millions of ISD-sized vessels. As to whether the Galactic Empire has only SSDs and Type-I and Type-II ISDs in it's fleet make up, I think it's fair to say that there are other classes out there, based on comments by Han again in ANH about the so-called "bulk cruisers". These starships may be the older Republic Clone War-era ships seen in AoTC and RoTS, or they may be something else entirely different. So numbers greater than 1,000 for the GE ship count are more likely, though it is hard from a strict canonical standpoint to say exactly how many more that is. Some Warsies will likely try to justify hundreds of thousands or millions of ISDs based on the GE's industrial capacity to build two Death Stars in 23-plus years. However, as pointed out before, we have no idea how much of the GE budget was expended to build the Death Stars, and the fact that the Empire faced no outside threats, and only a relatively minor internal threat from the Rebellion. So the need for millions of starships is probably not that great.
-Mike

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Post by Kane Starkiller » Sat Aug 26, 2006 12:46 pm

Hello everyone.
I must say that your count of Imperial ships is a severe underestimation caused by several incorrect notions.

Republic fleet pre TPM
The article on the main page assumes that Galactic Republic didn't have a fleet prior to military buildup at AOTC but that is simply ridiculous. Consider the fact that Trade Federation leaders were afraid of senate's actions. Why would this be so if the senate had no fleet with which to counter their battleships? If they had total space superiority over galactic space why would they enter into alliance with Sidious in the first place?
This misconception that GR had no fleet obviously stems from the fact that they had no army. So why was making an army such a big deal if they already had a fleet? Beacuse an army enables you to capture a planet and control it while the fleet merley enables you to lay siege or exterminate it's population thus any war of conquest would be futile. This is why everyone was so afraid of droid armies: it demonstrated the intention of Trade Federation to conquer planets.
Secondly we have also seen that Naboo has it's own fleet (however pathetic) even though it is described as a small peaceful planet. A planet like Coruscant could have far larger fleet. So it is also clear that members of the Republic maintained their own separate fleets which would all presumably be absorbed into the Empire later.

Clone wars
The clone wars lasted for 3 years thus demonstrating that neither side had an overwhelming advantage in either technology or industrial capacity.
The Empire was later formed by absorbing the Republic and the Federation therefore it didn't have more than an order of magnitude greater industrial capacity. Since we know that the Empire could build a Death Star in 3 years the two factions involved in the long war likely produced millions of ships. The Empire wasn't founded in vacuum and surely absorbed those ships.

Industrial capacity
It has been suggested that Death Star's constituted a large drain on Empire's budget but this is obviously not true since the Empire could keep both the location and the fact that second Death Star is being built at all a secret.
The fact that the Empire can arbitrary pick a system in which to construct a 160km battlestation clearly demonstartes their industrial capacity.

Neccesary ships
The fact that Empire doesn't have external enemies in no way means that it won't need a large fleet. The Empire doesn't merley have to defeat the enemy but has to maintain control over it's own territory. For analogy look at Iraq. What was more difficult: defeating it's military or maintaining control over it's territory? What required more soldiers?

Future wars
Ultimatley how many ships the Empire has now is irrelevant. If the Empire decides to conquer the Federation it can simply go full bore on ship production for a few years and steamroll it.

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Post by Jedi Master Spock » Sat Aug 26, 2006 7:48 pm

Kane Starkiller wrote:Hello everyone.
I must say that your count of Imperial ships is a severe underestimation caused by several incorrect notions.

Republic fleet pre TPM
The article on the main page assumes that Galactic Republic didn't have a fleet prior to military buildup at AOTC but that is simply ridiculous. Consider the fact that Trade Federation leaders were afraid of senate's actions. Why would this be so if the senate had no fleet with which to counter their battleships? If they had total space superiority over galactic space why would they enter into alliance with Sidious in the first place?
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.
Clone wars
The clone wars lasted for 3 years thus demonstrating that neither side had an overwhelming advantage in either technology or industrial capacity.
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.
The Empire was later formed by absorbing the Republic and the Federation therefore it didn't have more than an order of magnitude greater industrial capacity.
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.
Since we know that the Empire could build a Death Star in 3 years the two factions involved in the long war likely produced millions of ships. The Empire wasn't founded in vacuum and surely absorbed those ships.
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.

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.
Industrial capacity
It has been suggested that Death Star's constituted a large drain on Empire's budget but this is obviously not true since the Empire could keep both the location and the fact that second Death Star is being built at all a secret.
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.
The fact that the Empire can arbitrary pick a system in which to construct a 160km battlestation clearly demonstartes their industrial capacity.

Neccesary ships
The fact that Empire doesn't have external enemies in no way means that it won't need a large fleet. The Empire doesn't merley have to defeat the enemy but has to maintain control over it's own territory. For analogy look at Iraq. What was more difficult: defeating it's military or maintaining control over it's territory? What required more soldiers?
Which tells us why the Empire continued to militarize. The Rebellion was always present, and working on building their own fleet up.
Future wars
Ultimatley how many ships the Empire has now is irrelevant. If the Empire decides to conquer the Federation it can simply go full bore on ship production for a few years and steamroll it.
"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.

The only thing you could shift is having the Empire not build Death Stars and instead develop more shipyard capacity.

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Post by Nonamer » Sat Aug 26, 2006 8:30 pm

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.

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Post by Mike DiCenso » Sun Aug 27, 2006 1:27 am

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.

Remember Han's comment in ANH? "It's too big to be a space station."

Space stations and starships just never were built anywhere near that scale, or Han would've been far more receptive to the idea that what they were encountering was an artifical structure, and probably broken off chasing down the TIE fighter much sooner than he did.

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.
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Post by AnonymousRedShirtEnsign » Sun Aug 27, 2006 4:45 am

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.

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.

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Post by Kane Starkiller » Sun Aug 27, 2006 1:34 pm

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.

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Post by Jedi Master Spock » Sun Aug 27, 2006 2:42 pm

Kane Starkiller wrote: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.
I believe Sidious had no small part in getting them to militarize a fleet in the first place. No Sidious, no mess, no Clone Wars, no Star Wars. This whole gambit was his from the beginning. And Jedi... well, Jedi can do magic.
Darth Vader wrote:The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.
Kane Starkiller wrote:You of course have evidence that they "didn't know what to do in a war".
While some have perhaps been too critical, the point does stand. The Republic seems not to know what to do with a war, which is why they turn to Palpatine in their confusion and fear. Fortunately for the Republic, the CIS doesn't know much about war either.
Kane Starkiller wrote: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.
I'll say it once, and I don't need to repeat this more than once to you: The Death Star is not in the slightest like a starship.

The Death Star is not maneuverable like a starship, nor as densely sprinkled with weapons mounts, nor as proportionally heavily armored; it is essentially a giant battlestation with a superweapon and hyperdrive slapped on - and it took 25 years to build the first one. 25 years of developing Death Star-specific infrastructure. Most of the Death Star, too, would be mass-produced; nearly every corridor, defense turret, waste processing center, etc, is duplicated many times over.

Besides, Mike DiCenso said it better:
Mike DiCenso wrote: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.
These, too, have shields and weaponry. They have highly sophisticated massive medical facilities, and on-board construction, repair, and refit facilities. These, too, can lumber about systems - watch the opening episode of DS9.

I believe this has all been addressed by others, and I don't feel I ought to repeat it to you more than once; if you don't want to believe it, can't grasp it, or don't have anything new to say, we may as well move on to different methods by which to compare the fleets than by their stations.
Kane Starkiller wrote: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.
When you have an army of droids as capable as the ones the Trade Federation fielded, even a vastly outnumbered clone army is "huge." If you want to review numbers, though, the 200,000 clone army seen at Geonosis could have easily bunked down in a single TF battleship.
Kane Starkiller wrote: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.
The Imperial Senate that gave up all its powers during the Clone Wars? The first Death Star was not successfully secret; leaks probably would have sprouted naturally with the second one fairly soon after ROTJ in any case.
Kane Starkiller wrote: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.
As we see in the OT, the Empire didn't have much control over its million systems. Logically, this tells us that the Empire definitely didn't have a comparable number of ships to its million systems.
Kane Starkiller wrote:Not they could. They CAN. The Empire didn't need any specialized shipyards to complete the second Death Star on Endor.
The station itself is its own shipyard. The infrastructure in question are construction ships, droids, personnel, off-site manufacturing and shipping, etc.
Kane Starkiller wrote: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.
Given that the entire US coast can be photographed by satellite, that would be difficult in this day an age - but we're not dealing with anything remotely like that.

You can keep any location in the galaxy a secret for a few years; compared to any substantial hunk of the galaxy, the Death Star is microscopic.

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Post by Nonamer » Sun Aug 27, 2006 6:33 pm

Kane Starkiller wrote:
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.
Well much of the steel production of the US goes into stuff like cars and trucks that are just as fully mobile as aircraft carriers. Even this is somewhere on the order of tens of millions of tons of steel each year. Even a few hundred Aircraft carriers a year will quickly bankrupt the US government after several years.

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Post by Kane Starkiller » Sun Aug 27, 2006 7:00 pm

Jedi Master Spock wrote:I believe Sidious had no small part in getting them to militarize a fleet in the first place. No Sidious, no mess, no Clone Wars, no Star Wars. This whole gambit was his from the beginning.
No Sidious got them to get more militarized. They had their fleet before they made contact with him. And even so this does not explain the fact that Trade Federation feared reprisals from the senate. Obviously the senate must've had some kind of military force. And you still haven't answered my point about the seperate fleet that Republic members were known to maintain.
Jedi Master Spock wrote:And Jedi... well, Jedi can do magic.
I thought that we are going to have a rational debate here. Nowhere did the Jedi demonstrate the power to destroy battleships by usage of Force. Unless you are talking about a few extremly powerful individuals from EU.
Jedi Master Spock wrote:While some have perhaps been too critical, the point does stand. The Republic seems not to know what to do with a war, which is why they turn to Palpatine in their confusion and fear. Fortunately for the Republic, the CIS doesn't know much about war either.
They guy who wrote the article is wrong. We have seen both ground missiles in AOTC and missiles fired by Jango fett and as for his ridiculous claims that modern U.S. military could defeat the clone army I would really like to see conventional weapons that can carve up 800m wide sphercial ships in mere seconds. This of course doesn't even count in the energy shields. And what does it mean that Republic "doesn't know what to do with a war"? They demonstrated solid combined arms tactics which improved by the tome of ROTS. And of course you don't exactly have to be a military genious to know that more ships=better odds.
Jedi Master Spock wrote:I'll say it once, and I don't need to repeat this more than once to you: The Death Star is not in the slightest like a starship.

The Death Star is not maneuverable like a starship, nor as densely sprinkled with weapons mounts, nor as proportionally heavily armored; it is essentially a giant battlestation with a superweapon and hyperdrive slapped on - and it took 25 years to build the first one. 25 years of developing Death Star-specific infrastructure. Most of the Death Star, too, would be mass-produced; nearly every corridor, defense turret, waste processing center, etc, is duplicated many times over.
What does it mean to be "maneuverable like a starship"? You do realize that Death Star is 20 million times bigger than ISD and therefore cannot possibly be as manuverable? How do you know how densly is the Death Star armed? We know that Doddona warned them about heavy turret concentrations which means they avoided those parts of the Death Star. Furthermore elaborate on what "hyperdrive slapped on" means. Do you mean the hyperdrive is literaly attached to the surface of the Death Star? If so provide evidence and screenshots. Or do you mean that hyperdrive on the Death Star is somehow inferior to the standard hyperdrive? If so please elaborate what is so substandard about an engine that can move 120 km starship around? And your "waste processing center" mass production is simply laughable. Those same parts like corridors and defense turrets would be mass produced for ISDs too. Not to mention the implicit assumption that Death Star's sewage system will somehow constitute significant cost next to the superlaser system and sublight engines.
Jedi Master Spock wrote:These, too, have shields and weaponry. They have highly sophisticated massive medical facilities, and on-board construction, repair, and refit facilities. These, too, can lumber about systems - watch the opening episode of DS9.
We are talking about those huge spacedock starbases. What does DS9, which is thousands of times smaller, have to do with that? And even DS9 which is 1000 times smaler than SB74 and tens of millions of times smaller than Death Star can normally cross 160 million km in two months making it's standard acceleration rate about 0.01m/s2. Only by performing a dangerous modification did they manage to increase it's acceleration to 20m/s2. I'm not even comment on the "sophisticated medical facilities" which supposedly make those space stations as close to a starship as a Death Star.
And of course you still failed to produce any evidence whatsoever that those huge spacestations have shields or weapons or can move at all.
Jedi Master Spock wrote:I believe this has all been addressed by others, and I don't feel I ought to repeat it to you more than once; if you don't want to believe it, can't grasp it, or don't have anything new to say, we may as well move on to different methods by which to compare the fleets than by their stations.
A station is, by definition, a stationary object. Death Star is not stationary therefore it is not a station regardless of how in-universe characters refer to it. A Death Star is a starship while Starbase 74 is not. You can repeat your "Death Star is a station" mantra all you want but the evidence clearly demonstrates it's true nature.
Jedi Master Spock wrote:When you have an army of droids as capable as the ones the Trade Federation fielded, even a vastly outnumbered clone army is "huge." If you want to review numbers, though, the 200,000 clone army seen at Geonosis could have easily bunked down in a single TF battleship.
They said 200,000 units not clones. Besides we have seen the long distance shots of the battle as well as holo displays and the droid army did not outnumber the clone army significantly. In fact we all saw that their droids were as deadly to clone army as the clone army to droids.
Jedi Master Spock wrote:The Imperial Senate that gave up all its powers during the Clone Wars? The first Death Star was not successfully secret; leaks probably would have sprouted naturally with the second one fairly soon after ROTJ in any case.
You really havent been paying attention to the films have you? Didn't you see one of the admirals asking "how will the Emperor maintain control without the beaurcracy"? The senate did still have control. And as for leaks yes that is the point. It required "leaks" to know that Empire is constructing the Death Star. Which means that it didn't take up a large fraction of Empire's industrial capacity. Otherwise you could simply note that 50% of transporters are constantly moving supplies to a certain location or that 50% of workers are moved to a single system.
Jedi Master Spock wrote:As we see in the OT, the Empire didn't have much control over its million systems. Logically, this tells us that the Empire definitely didn't have a comparable number of ships to its million systems.
Why? What kind of logic dictates that ship in system=system under control? Have you seen how many ships are constantly taking off and landing on Coruscant? Do you think one ship will enable you to track and enforce control over all those ships? Granted Coruscant is extremly large planet but even Tatooine will have more than one ship.
Jedi Master Spock wrote:The station itself is its own shipyard. The infrastructure in question are construction ships, droids, personnel, off-site manufacturing and shipping, etc.
It must be nice to invent things as you go along. What exactly prevents the Empire, then, to use other ships such as ISDs and SSDs as "their own shipyards"? Could you please elaborate on your twisted logic that a huge 160 km ship can be easily built wherever they want without any supporting infractructure and yet small 1.6 km ships require some fancy shipyards?
Jedi Master Spock wrote:Given that the entire US coast can be photographed by satellite, that would be difficult in this day an age - but we're not dealing with anything remotely like that.
Actually it's a lot like that since that entire galaxy has been mapped by SW civilization and no one will be photographing the entire cost of US unless they get a reason to do so. Like noting that US is spending an unusually high amount of resources on something.
Jedi Master Spock wrote:You can keep any location in the galaxy a secret for a few years; compared to any substantial hunk of the galaxy, the Death Star is microscopic.
Yes but you must also keep the fact that you are sending hordes of transporters there also a secret. And that won't happen if Death Star took up most of their industry as you claim and they sent something like 50% of their transport fleet.
Nonamer wrote:Well much of the steel production of the US goes into stuff like cars and trucks that are just as fully mobile as aircraft carriers. Even this is somewhere on the order of tens of millions of tons of steel each year. Even a few hundred Aircraft carriers a year will quickly bankrupt the US government after several years.
But they are still not aircraft carriers nor are they remotley similar to it. In fact your own examples shows that it is much easier to build and maintain a large number of smaller units than one large. Which means that it is likely much easier to produce 20 million ISDs than one Death Star.

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Post by Nonamer » Sun Aug 27, 2006 8:11 pm

Kane Starkiller wrote:
Nonamer wrote:Well much of the steel production of the US goes into stuff like cars and trucks that are just as fully mobile as aircraft carriers. Even this is somewhere on the order of tens of millions of tons of steel each year. Even a few hundred Aircraft carriers a year will quickly bankrupt the US government after several years.
But they are still not aircraft carriers nor are they remotley similar to it. In fact your own examples shows that it is much easier to build and maintain a large number of smaller units than one large. Which means that it is likely much easier to produce 20 million ISDs than one Death Star.
Now you're just playing semantics. I was pointing out having the material volume need to produce a set amount of ships does not mean you have the ability. Doesn't matter what these things are since both are vaguely similar manufactured machines. Simply put it's been very well established by every source in SW that the total number of ISDs is not outside of the thousands. Real world examples support this massive difference in ability to utilize construction materials. To claim that DS implies the ability for the Empire to millions of ISDs is unsubstanciated speculation and not support by either in-universe sources or real-world sources.

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