The EU says SW's capships have missile/torpedo launchers...

Post by **Jedi Master Spock** » Sat Jan 31, 2009 6:06 am

Well, the claim has never been that the Emperor was racist per se, simply that the Empire - and especially its nearly-all-human military - made use of racism. Starting with the Thrawn trilogy, there have been quite a few cases where Palpatine goes outside of the system he's set up and appoints a competent alien to a position of power.

The fact that the Empire's entire military complex - which seems to be closely tied to governance and certainly wields great influence - is almost all human is something of a red light. It could be a symptom of latent racism within the Imperial power structure, or it could be the cause of racism within the Imperial power structure. Or both.

ILikeDeathNote · Post by **ILikeDeathNote** » Sat Jan 31, 2009 7:04 am

The Corporal wrote:
Lovely. How do they justify Palpatine having a large blue alien with tentacles on his head as an assistant?

...by having EU writers admit they are stupid and only want to perpetuate 2D caricatures and stereotypes for the sake of lazy writing?

Airlocke_Jedi_Knight · Post by **Airlocke_Jedi_Knight** » Sat Jan 31, 2009 7:22 am

ILikeDeathNote wrote:
The Corporal wrote:
Lovely. How do they justify Palpatine having a large blue alien with tentacles on his head as an assistant?
...by having EU writers admit they are stupid and only want to perpetuate 2D caricatures and stereotypes for the sake of lazy writing?

This statement is offensive. The EU is not horrible as it is constantly portrayed, it simply isn't possible to maintain consistency over 200+ novels and countless comic books, with well over 50 different artists/authors. The problem with the EU, quite simply, is that it is entirely too large, with an entirely too small regulatory body(Shapiro and whoever else). For the most part, emphasis on most, the EU is inter-consistent. It does occasionally contradict the movies, sadly, yet that is completely irrelevant considering that Lucas has said that he considers the EU to be a separate entity. Actually, I believe he used the term Universe. This saddens me, but, it is what it is.

Now, to the Empire's racism. Throughout the entirety of the original trilogy, the only non-humans seen aboard an Imperial ship(aside from droids) were Chewbacca, the weird trash monster on the DS, and the Bounty Hunters from ESB. No other non humans were seen aboard the ISDs, furthermore, non of those were wearing an imperial uniform. The Storm Troopers almost certainly had to be human, not many other species would be able to fit ito the armor.

l33telboi · Post by **l33telboi** » Sat Jan 31, 2009 9:58 am

In regards to the Acclamator and its torpedoes, the Acclamator II is said to be a vessel designed for orbital bombardment, and the torpedoes are there to facilitate that. I don't know if anyone here has played Republic Commando, but we see the torpedoes in that game, and they're absolutely huge. As a result the vessel is said to be capable of snuffing out all life on a continent in a few hours.

The torpedoes are said to be used to spread 'deadly proton energy' across population centers. Since proton torpedoes are basically nukes, I'm guessing this is just the Star Wars way of saying 'they're radioactive'. Of course it could be something more exotic as well.

The Corporal · Post by **The Corporal** » Sat Jan 31, 2009 12:45 pm

Airlocke_Jedi_Knight wrote:
This statement is offensive. The EU is not horrible as it is constantly portrayed, it simply isn't possible to maintain consistency over 200+ novels and countless comic books, with well over 50 different artists/authors. The problem with the EU, quite simply, is that it is entirely too large, with an entirely too small regulatory body(Shapiro and whoever else). For the most part, emphasis on most, the EU is inter-consistent. It does occasionally contradict the movies, sadly, yet that is completely irrelevant considering that Lucas has said that he considers the EU to be a separate entity. Actually, I believe he used the term Universe. This saddens me, but, it is what it is.

It also happens to be true. The EU is there to generate a profit by cranking out large numbers of books and it's hard to do that if the authors take a long time to finish their novels. There are good stories and gems in the EU, just like there are in the Trek EU but that old saying about 95% of something being crap applies to more than just TV. Even a good portion of the WH40K novels are garbage.

Now, to the Empire's racism. Throughout the entirety of the original trilogy, the only non-humans seen aboard an Imperial ship(aside from droids) were Chewbacca, the weird trash monster on the DS, and the Bounty Hunters from ESB. No other non humans were seen aboard the ISDs, furthermore, non of those were wearing an imperial uniform. The Storm Troopers almost certainly had to be human, not many other species would be able to fit ito the armor.

This is merely an indicator of possible racism. There are many reasons why aliens may not be serving in the portions of the fleet we saw; units may be segregated for ease of supply, language issues etc. Remember that we only saw Death Squadron and the Death Star crew in any detail. A fleet for a power such as the Empire would be huge.

In regards to the Acclamator and its torpedoes, the Acclamator II is said to be a vessel designed for orbital bombardment, and the torpedoes are there to facilitate that. I don't know if anyone here has played Republic Commando, but we see the torpedoes in that game, and they're absolutely huge. As a result the vessel is said to be capable of snuffing out all life on a continent in a few hours.

The torpedoes are said to be used to spread 'deadly proton energy' across population centers. Since proton torpedoes are basically nukes, I'm guessing this is just the Star Wars way of saying 'they're radioactive'. Of course it could be something more exotic as well.

Possibly a SW neutron bomb equivilant?

Mike DiCenso · Post by **Mike DiCenso** » Sat Jan 31, 2009 4:19 pm

Airlocke_Jedi_Knight wrote: The EU is not horrible as it is constantly portrayed, it simply isn't possible to maintain consistency over 200+ novels and countless comic books, with well over 50 different artists/authors. The problem with the EU, quite simply, is that it is entirely too large, with an entirely too small regulatory body(Shapiro and whoever else). For the most part, emphasis on most, the EU is inter-consistent. It does occasionally contradict the movies, sadly, yet that is completely irrelevant considering that Lucas has said that he considers the EU to be a separate entity. Actually, I believe he used the term Universe. This saddens me, but, it is what it is.

This is just what Star Trek fans have had to deal with now for quite some time as each new Trek series came along, and each one introduced things that at least slightly contradicted each other, and was made worse by the number of writers, different producers, and the production problems inherent in making a television show on a weekly basis. On top of that there were the movies and the Trek EU material, which even in the 1980s and early 1990s was considerable in scope. Thankfully the novels, even the movie and TV novelizations were declared non-canon, and so things were vastly simplifed that way. But the rapidly expanding number of TV episodes lead to a large number of contradictions.

Star Wars had far less material for a long time, so things were much simpler and easier to speculate upon, but then Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy came along in the early 1990s and everything exploded from there, and now there is even a new TV series to complicate matters, and a silly canon hierarchy that gets everyone confused. This can only expected to get far worse once the live-action TV series comes along.
-Mike

Airlocke_Jedi_Knight · Post by **Airlocke_Jedi_Knight** » Sat Jan 31, 2009 7:10 pm

I can't wait for that TV series.

Mr. Oragahn · Post by **Mr. Oragahn** » Sat Jan 31, 2009 7:16 pm

The Corporal wrote:
Mike DiCenso wrote:Unfortunately, the current EU seems to be trying to maintain the whole racial prejudice angle, among other things, even attempting clever retconning to do so.
-Mike
Lovely. How do they justify Palpatine having a large blue alien with tentacles on his head as an assistant?

Simple. By the time of the OT, the lackeys around Palpatine are all old humans.
There are only humans in the Imperial Navy.

Aliens are only scumbags looking for some easy money to make.

In that light, I'd say it's quite interesting. They unite non-humans worlds into a force which is not meant to win anyway, then they crush them all and keep human, clones or not, at the top of the chain, both for the governmental assets and the military (no alien Moff either).

Palpatine probably kept tentacle guy because he was efficient and corrupted enough for what he was needed for, but I can easily imagine Palp ditching him after a while, or sending him to govern an non-human populated world under Imperial rule.

Mr. Oragahn · Post by **Mr. Oragahn** » Sat Jan 31, 2009 7:20 pm

l33telboi wrote:In regards to the Acclamator and its torpedoes, the Acclamator II is said to be a vessel designed for orbital bombardment, and the torpedoes are there to facilitate that. I don't know if anyone here has played Republic Commando, but we see the torpedoes in that game, and they're absolutely huge. As a result the vessel is said to be capable of snuffing out all life on a continent in a few hours.

The torpedoes are said to be used to spread 'deadly proton energy' across population centers. Since proton torpedoes are basically nukes, I'm guessing this is just the Star Wars way of saying 'they're radioactive'. Of course it could be something more exotic as well.

Although it's interesting to read that massive warheads are needed for such a task, this is the EU.

Only time will tell if TCS will reveal a particular use of missiles on warships, and if it does, we'll see if it makes sense.

The Corporal · Post by **The Corporal** » Sat Jan 31, 2009 7:23 pm

Mr. Oragahn wrote:
Although it's interesting to read that massive warheads are needed for such a task, this is the EU.

Only time will tell if TCS will reveal a particular use of missiles on warships, and if it does, we'll see if it makes sense.

TCS?

ILikeDeathNote · Post by **ILikeDeathNote** » Sat Jan 31, 2009 8:48 pm

Airlocke_Jedi_Knight wrote:This statement is offensive.

This statement, and my statement as well, are matters of opinion (and hopefully it should be self-evident as such).

The Corporal wrote: It also happens to be true. The EU is there to generate a profit by cranking out large numbers of books and it's hard to do that if the authors take a long time to finish their novels. There are good stories and gems in the EU, just like there are in the Trek EU but that old saying about 95% of something being crap applies to more than just TV. Even a good portion of the WH40K novels are garbage.

I quote this because it saves me from having to repeat what's already been said, and it's the truth. It's also known as Sturgeon's Law (which, incidentally, was invented by a Sci-Fi author in response to sci-fi, published in a sci-fi magazine).

Personally (and once again this is my opinion), but save for few exceptions I always thought the depiction of the Star Wars universe in the EU is outright retarded. Lucas envisioned an oppressive Empire consolidating its power on a galactic-wide scale and a heroic and even scrappy little Rebellion fighting the Empire based on principles and resourcefulness. The Empire didn't believe in women's rights, or minority/alien's rights, because that was the oppressive nature of the Empire. This means that you were probably not going to see women or aliens in the Empire. Except for the Emperor, Tarkin and Vader (all three unequivocally evil men) virtually the entirety of the Empire remains faceless and anonymous - dare I say it, the Stormtroopers and Imperial officers manning the Empire's war machine were more metaphorical than human.

Now we go to the EU, where we see (not to knock the Thrawn trilogy, despite its Deus Ex Machina ending) more aliens and women in the Empire than we do in the Rebellion (in fact it seems like the only women we see for the Rebellion, other than Mothma and Leia, are almost unequivocally a love interest for either Luke or another one of the same half a dozen heroes who are always the heros - talk about a double-lack of diversity) and that just bugs me, because it's the complete opposite of what it should be. Not only that, but the Empire is no longer oppressive, but outright EVEEEEEL for evil's sake - which is actually ok if they weren't just retardedly evil.

Now, everything I just said was bullcrap. It's an opinion, and even I'll admit it isn't exactly a smart opinion. People have stupid reasons for liking/hating lots of things. But now that I got that out of the way let's get back to the subject at hand.

l33telboi · Post by **l33telboi** » Sat Jan 31, 2009 9:14 pm

The SAGA edition RPGs have little to do with higher canon though. I just read the Clone Wars SAGA RPG, and there were a few gems there that kinda warned me not to take them too seriously. Apparently CIS ships are not crewed by droids...

...So why then is it that we never see anything but droid crews?

Ah, at least it gave some hard figures when it comes to fleets and such, which were nice to see. Oh, and 3 million clones.

Airlocke_Jedi_Knight · Post by **Airlocke_Jedi_Knight** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 3:11 am

Okay, I should not have said that I found it offensive, that isn't true. I just didn't like how you expressed your opinion in such a negative way. It's just a pet peeve I have, absolutely nothing personal. Saying that the EU authors are stupid is a blanket statement that is quite unfair. I really have no problem with your opinion, that is not what I meant, I just thought you were a little vindictive and overly critical.

Anyway, proton torpedoes. I can only recall total of three instances(feel free to correct me if I am misremembering) where proton torpedoes are used over the entirety of both trilogies. The end battle of PM, assault on the first DS, and the assault on the second DS. In all of these instances the torpedoes were fired by starfighters. That would, of course, lead us to believe that the capital ships do not have proton torpedoes. However, as many have pointed out, we have not seen the full extent of any of the various space navies in the two trilogies. I don't even believe we've seen the full capacity of what we have seen. We get a very limited amount of capital ship battles in the movies, and most of those were seen from the insides of ships. Their really isn't an abundance of information that can be gleaned from these movies, especially since the emphasis was on the characters with the military actions almost after thoughts. I think more information, truly valid information, is needed before specifics like these can even be discussed, unless, of course, the EU is considered valid.

Praeothmin · Post by **Praeothmin** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 2:30 pm

Well, if the ICS are to be believed (in the slighest), then why would ships that can "put their entire power output in their guns" need torpedoes?
How powerful would these torpedoes be?

I can understand why fighters would need them, because their puny weapons (when compared to Capships') might not be enough to seriously threathen a fully-shielded Capship, but the torpedoes might allow them to bridge the Fighter-Capship gap in terms of firepower, and allow them to threathen such ships.

The torpedoes would invariably be muchmore powerful then their standard energy weapons.

Mr. Oragahn · Post by **Mr. Oragahn** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 6:00 pm

The Corporal wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote:
Although it's interesting to read that massive warheads are needed for such a task, this is the EU.

Only time will tell if TCS will reveal a particular use of missiles on warships, and if it does, we'll see if it makes sense.
TCS?

A W must have slipped. -_-'