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How NOT to Rule a Galaxy -- The Strategy and Tactics of the Imperial Navy | Star Wars
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- Опубликовано: 16 авг 2024
- From the placement of Star Destroyers and escort fleets, to common battle tactics, to Imperial officer hierarchy - we cover all aspects of the Galactic Empire's naval strategy and tactics on today's Star Wars Lore video!
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Information from today's video should be applicable to Star Wars canon and legends, but where discrepancies exist, I've went with Star Wars Legends information. #starwars #empire #galacticempire
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EckhartsLadder can you put the Didact or the Warden Eternal in a fight with Darth Vader please
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EckhartsLadder I definitely agree with you they didn't really Address the resources the best way possible plus they never adapted to new strategies The main problem with that is once the rebellion figured out how to counter the strategy the Empire could not adapt plus they try to Rule through fear that's a problem seat fear only work for so long until someone stands up to you and says no it only takes one person the light of spark of defiance then everything you built on fear this crumbles plus another main problem the Empire had along with this over bloated fleet was there admirals most them were not dedicated to fighting for 1 cause was rebellion was more than willing to fight and die for what they believe in they might have different view points in how to solve problems but when they were at the breaking point where they need to agree they agreed were admirals and other military officials in the Empire would often scheme plot against each other and this was often used against their own armies to effectively wipe out their competition in some kind of political gain for power advantage I looked through a lot of the battles the find out that a lot of military assets were Wasted on political gain favor and just knock someone down a peg so really the Empire had not only in fighting as debility and corruption and finally just and not well organized fleet and they didn't have to fire support account of the rebels or shabby to counteract fast movie grill hit-and-run tactics over all their army was not built well yeah if you're gonna stake in Empire on fear you can't just go halfway leader gonna push forward keep the momentum going or use a different Strategy over all the Empire really wasn't built that will
I think having hunter killer battlegroups assigned to the direct control of Palpatine and Vader outside the control of the Moffs is a great plan. That way they can focus specifically on hunting down enemies without worrying about pulling resources from defense fleets and you can give them better equipment like TIE Defenders. Also it would be right up Palpatine's alley, giving him another stick the keep the warlords in line.
What I've always found interesting about the Empire is that their chronic failures are actually a result of mistakes in their core philosophies. [WARNING: MASSIVE COMMENT INCOMING]
1) Overreach: This one's pretty simple. The Empire was trying to do something no one had EVER done before - centralized control of the ENTIRE galaxy. This meant that they had to pour utterly ludicrous amounts of money into their military, rely on inferior but cheap units like the TIE fighter, and they were STILL overstretched. Their attempts to control by force so many places at once meant that they had rebellions all over the place, and often only sent enough forces to piss off the locals further. While the Republic worked with local governments, the Empire WAS the local government, adding a further cost of bureaucracy to their burden. Soldier and pilot quality decreased substantially to meet demands. Rebellions on places like Lothal and Mon Calamari could not be properly suppressed, because the necessary forces were busy elsewhere.
2) Fear Leads To Anger: It may be better to be feared than to be loved, but it is most certainly better to be loved than to be hated. The Tarkin Doctrine was an enormous mistake, because the Empire couldn't back it up, due to the overreach problem mentioned above. Building Star Destroyers for intimidation instead of battle cost money and left the Empire quite dependent on a poorly designed ship with a load of weaknesses. The Empire's cruelty and tyranny tended to INCREASE their number of enemies instead of decreasing them, and when the Empire showed the first sign of weakness at Yavin, huge numbers of systems pounced on the chance to get rid of them. If a man walks into a room, shoots a random person and declares that he will shoot other people if they don't do what he says, you will obey him, even if he occasionally still shoots other people - until his gun jams, at which point you will attack him with everything you have because you can't trust him to not shoot you later. The Empire literally could not win the Galactic Civil War because every time they murdered someone, they were making new enemies, and the Empire always had its back turned SOMEWHERE. Also, you can't forget the number of noteworthy Imperials who defected due to atrocities they saw and couldn't stomach (like Crix Madine). If the Empire had just acted less violently all the time, they'd have gotten a lot less violence in return.
3) Bigger Isn't Better: This should be pretty obvious, but the Empire's enormous lust for giant grey metal space things was a weakness, not a strength. Certain programs like the Executor and the Bellator had some use to them in limited quantities, but most of the giant projects were wastes of money that made the Empire more vulnerable, not less, because now their enemies could aim at a big, slow, single target. The Death Stars are, of course, the ultimate example of this, enormously costly devices whose use made the Empire more hated and which handed the Rebels their two greatest victories, at Yavin and Endor. Given the Imperial Navy's fundamental, obvious weaknesses (lack of speed and flexibility and their vast fighter inferiority), that money would have been much better spent on mid-sized patrol craft, better TIEs or something that makes people actually LIKE the Empire, like universal health care or something. Just anything other than money-sink WMDs.
4) Order Sixty-Sucks: The Empire values above all else order, obedience and power, and it drilled these things into its personnel. The result was a highly obedient military that generally lacked creativity, critical thinking, innovation and flexibility on the battlefield. Critical thinking is the enemy of tyranny, because you can't innovate without questioning the status quo, tradition and your superiors - things the Empire considered to be treasonous. Imperial units almost always stuck to protocol, which made them predictable and bad at adjusting to unexpected situations, things the Rebel Alliance exploited for all it was worth. The encouragement of innovation and relative individuality that made the clone army the greatest fighting force in history was lost in the Stormtroopers (though this problem is much greater in First Order stormtroopers than their Imperial predecessors). Talented pilots like Han Solo were lost due to their lack of conformity (though, to be fair, Han specifically would probably have been kicked out of any military). The types of people who rose up in the Imperial ranks were either good at following orders and little else (making it a problem when they are supposed to be giving the orders) or highly ambitious types willing to pretend to always follow orders, leading to many admirals who more look out for themselves than for the Empire. It is an absolute miracle that Thrawn got to the rank he did, and that's only because his results were so undeniably impressive. Imagine how many half-Thrawns the Empire employed but didn't use.
5) Experience Is Everything: Due to the Empire's enormous size, most of its troops actually had very little combat experience in comparison to the Rebels, who tended to get a lot of experience very quickly or die. Outside of specialized units like Death Squadron or Thrawn's fleets, most Imperial Navy captains spend 99.9% of their careers on patrol, on guard duty or in drydock. They may have a few skirmishes with pirates or smugglers, but nothing with anyone armed and ready to fight them. Most TIE pilots have probably never fired their weapons outside of training, while Rebel elites like Rogue Squadron may have dozens of kills a piece. This makes the average Imperial captain entirely dependent on training, doctrine and Imperial propaganda to understand what to do and what to expect. That propaganda bit is important, since a key element of it was understating the Rebel threat, hence why like every non-Thrawn Imperial captain oozes arrogance when facing even notorious Rebels. A Star Destroyer captain is taught that any Rebel scum will immediately flee upon seeing of his ship, and so when a pack of Y-wings rushes him, he doesn't know what to do, because surely no one is that suici-BOOM!. This consistent misunderstanding, combined with the threat of violent punishments for failure (see Point 6, below) means that many Imperial captains are fairly cautious in battle, leading to the oft-criticized "send in the TIEs, hold back the ISD" strategy - the captain is more afraid of losing his ship than he is of the enemy escaping.
6) No "I" In "Team": Let's face it - the Empire is a terrible place to work. Poor pay, a crushingly impersonal bureaucratic war machine, the constant threat of death from your superiors, and a total lack of handrails. And that's assuming you're not a TIE pilot, flying something with the durability of a balloon at ludicrous speeds while your bosses can't even bother to give your ship life support. Every single Imperial employee below Vader is completely and utterly expendable, and most of them know it. Whereas the Rebels or the clone army had lots of bonds with coworkers and often treated them like family, the Empire didn't. There's a reason why the start of Agent Kallus's defection was the realization that if he died tomorrow, not a single one of his coworkers would miss him. On top of this, if it wasn't for the lost Death Stars, I would posit that the Empire might have lost more people to other Imperials than to Rebel activity. Vader's tendency to murder Imperial assets that he dislikes is well-known, and Palpatine liked to get his elite agents into battles with each other for his favor. Starkiller probably killed more Imperials while he was still following Vader's orders than after he went rogue. Tarkin Death Star'd an occupied Imperial base on Scarif. Operation CINDER was built around using WMDs on Imperial-occupied, Imperial-loyalist worlds, and shooting anyone who wouldn't go along with it. Vader murdered the reasonably competent and loyal General Tagge (and several of his underlings) because he didn't like them. And that's not even getting into fights with renegade admirals and the post-Endor warlord battles. Suffice to say, the fact that Thrawn not using capital punishment for mistakes is surprising proves how much of the Rebel's work the Empire likely did itself.
7) Long Live The Emperor: The Empire was government by Palpatine, for Palpatine. It was built to satisfy his own greed and lust for power, and not to effectively run things. His personal quirks and obsessions (most notably Death Stars) caused enormous wastes of money (as outlined above). His dickishness and cruelty extended to his subordinates, needlessly provoking further rebellions. He enjoyed playing his subordinates against each other, either for his own amusement or to keep them from overthrowing him (see his tendency to pit Vader and others like Dr. Cylo against each other "to be his true right hand"), making the "Imperials killing each other" problem much worse. Politics revolved around pleasing him, not governing efficiently. Palpatine's successful takeover of the Republic left him overconfident in his scheming abilities, leading to such debacles as Starkiller's rebellion and the Battle of Endor. Lastly, and most importantly, the Empire was simply not built to survive without Palpatine. He had no designated successor (not wanting anyone to get any ideas), and so the warlords tore the place apart as soon as he was gone. In contrast, if the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic had died suddenly, they would be replaced and the government would continue, like, you know, most governments. Don't build cults of personality, kids. It never works in the long-term.
In summary, the Empire has an enormous array of weaknesses resulting from understandable but foolish values choices. And that's what makes them interesting villains - while they are meant as the embodiment of evil, they are very flawed while remaining very dangerous.
Michael Ramon
I agree with most of what you said here. But to me is less a problem with philosophy as it is just sheer incompetence. While the fear doctrine is inherently flawed it meant that by default they had the biggest guns and ships around.
Yet they constantly failed to take advantage of it. Case in point Scarif. One star destroyer could have taken down the cruiser and a big part of the fleet. Two should have been overkill. But nope, they stood back. Yavin?, Nope.
Most of the problem is just arrogance and incompetence.
The Battle of Scarif was covered in Point 5, particularly the bit about the "send in the TIEs, hold back the ISD" strategy. The point of my comment was not to argue that much of the Imperial Navy was bad at their jobs (clearly they were), but to list reasons why that was the case. At Scarif, the ISDs were surprised and confused, and positioning themselves over the gate (the thing they were ordered to defend) until reinforcements arrived made a lot of sense. I've noticed that a lot of people seem to overestimate how powerful an ISD (particularly an Imperial-I) actually is. If anything, they should prefer long-distance combat, as it favors their big guns, and getting close to Rebel fighter squadrons tends to end badly. A single, unsupported ISD wading into the Rebel Scarif fleet would have been quickly disabled by ion torpedoes from the Y-wings and then shredded. The ISD is simply too big for its own good - another effect of the "scary, not effective" priorities.
Okay, not to get political here, but you just stated the politics of Putin, Erdogan, al-Assad, Trump, and the King Kim of North Korea. Especially Trump. Man that parody is turning out to be accurate. And Erdogan ain't better.
But to get back to the facts Jack.
I think there is some difficulty in assessing the Imperial Navy on occasion. Though I think it should be rather simple: Don't make your Capital Ships your Assault Ships too.
In other words, the Star Destroyers lost effectiveness, because they had to double as Assault Ships for the Stormtroopers and Imperial Army. Which, of course, means that your Battleships have a lot of extra ordnance and fuel not meant for Naval Warfare sitting pretty in areas that enlarge the size of your ship and makes for more targets that could kill the ship in the first place.
Imagine what would have happened if a group of AT-ATs got seized in their hangers by the Specters and Clones?
Yeah. That would be a disaster.
The Empire is, of course, based on real-life authoritarianism, so that makes sense, and most of my original points apply to some extent to real-life authoritarians. Authoritarians are often poor governors because their natural selfishness causes them to put their own interests above those of the nation/public, leading to corrupt and ineffective domestic government. Their fragile egos and obsession with control cause police states which both make the citizens unhappy and are giant wastes of money that governments run by people confident enough to survive being compared to Winnie the Pooh can spend on improving the citizens' lives. It would probably help if dictators weren't often also buffoonish weirdos (see Idi Amin).
Authoritarians of course love militaries and all of the trappings of military power (i.e. parades), but primarily use this power to oppress their citizens or to pick fights with neighbors. However, these fights often go poorly (see the Iran-Iraq War, the Falklands War, the Persian Gulf War, Uganda-Tanzania War) for several reasons. One, troublemakers usually don't have a lot of friends to help them out, and actually drive their enemies into alliances against them. Hitler had the most powerful military in the world, but managed to set it up so he was fighting the second, third and fourth most powerful ones at the same time. Secondly, since control of the military is often key to a dictator's power (and a military coup is the biggest threat to their power), dictators tend to prioritize loyalty over competency in their militaries, especially at the general/admiral level. Some dictators also override their own experts with disastrous results - Hitler and Stalin both did this, but Stalin, unlike Hitler, eventually learned to stop.
The point about ISDs being troop transports is an interesting one. While I can certainly see the argument for using dedicated transports, there is also something to be said for your baseline ship to have the ability to deal with some of everything - one ISD would theoretically be able to handle 90% of problems by itself, instead of going to a place and having to call for ground troops and wait for them to arrive. That said, the Empire probably could have used some more specialization - have some battleship-focused ships, some carrier-focused ships, some anti-fighter-focused ships and some ground-deployment-focused ships. Make all of them smaller, and deploy mixed fleets as needed. The Legends New Republic with their combination of the Nebula-class SD battleship and Endurance-class fleet carrier is a good example of this. At the very least, the old Republic's Venator SD was truly a hybrid carrier/battleship and so actually balanced as a mainline ship, instead of the ISD's "battleship with a small hanger taped on" focus on the type of war they weren't fighting.
Agreed, agreed. The costs for overspending on a military, internal intelligence agency, and police can be crippling. They aren't meant to be enforcers of power, but projectors of power.
A dictator's reliance on loyalty and control is often eroded by their own actions. I mean look at Venezuela right now. The country is living proof and can be considered the posture child for many worlds in the Empire. The same of North Korea.
Though the difference between North Korea and Venezuela, is that Venezuela has access to more up to date weapons or at least more recent weapons. North Korea still has antiques, almost literally if not so, for their military.
As for being able to carry the troops within the Capital ship, from some prespectives, it DOES seem like a good idea. But in reality, it's a fool's choice.
A Capital Ship is meant to do what? Fight Battles. That means the Capital Ship will be engaging other Capital Ships. So having Ground Troops, highly skilled, heavily armed, and well supplied Ground Troops, is going to create its own problems for a Capital Ship getting into a slugging match with other Capital Ships.
The idea that Capital Ships can carry their own troops is a good idea, when you have the biggest and best ships than everyone else. Unfortunately, there are still ways for little guys to sink the big guys. More ISDs were lost to single occupant Fighters than the Rebel Capitals being destroyed by ISDs.
When you look at it like that, that Anti-Ship Fighters and opposing Capital Ships inflicting such losses, it's little wonder the Empire fell apart, both in Canon and Legends.
Think about it for a moment. Aside from the Imperial II-class Star Destroyers having their Fighter Wings, they have a Legion. Which is based on the real world Legions, not only the Roman variety, but also on more recent Legions, the Legions of the United States.
The Legion is an actual military component that is the precursor to the modern Combined Arms Units. Cavalry, Artillery, and Infantry were organized as a single unit and formed the Legion. That's what made them different from other military units of the time. They had, as organic elements, all three arms of the main fighting force.
Horse Artillery, for example, were Light Artillery units typically formed for Flying Artillery Tactics and to be fast Artillery Units to move with the Cavalry if needed, but were not part of the the actual Cavalry Regiment. This can be easily established through numerous means, but for an example, General Buford's 1st Cavalry Brigade at the Battle of Gettysburg. He had two Batteries of Artillery assigned to his Brigade. These weren't light guns, typically like 4- to 6-pounders, but heavier guns like 3 inch Parrots and Rifles (even though they were both Rifled Artillery, they had different designers). The Horse Artillery Brigade was a formal unit for the Army of the Potomic's Cavalry Corps, but was rarely placed together and was eventually broken up altogether by 1865.
There was no Infantry Detachment to Buford's 1st CavDiv at Gettysburg or with any Cavalry unless assigned as a requirement.
Thus, the Legions can be seen as different and because of this, were Elite Units. They had to be. They were using complex Combined Arms.
This means, aside from the 9,700 Stormtroopers themselves, a Star Destroyer would have crews for the Stormtroopers vehicles and would also have to have pilots and assault ships for the Stormtroopers and their vehicles. Added personnel and equipment. This included Speeders, Tanks, Walkers, and Artillery. The assault craft would have be able to ferry AT-AT Walkers as well, plus the massive amount of supplies needed.
When a single ISD was destroyed, you not only lost the ship and its crew and its Fighter Wing as well as the supporting Shuttle Wing, but now you just lost an elite Brigade-size force with all of their vehicles, transports, weapons, and supplies!
The Rebels losing a GR75 Transport, carrying personnel, equipment, and supplies, it would be expected they would see a serious loss. But when they lost a Nebulon-B-class Frigate, they didn't lose more than a crew and the Air Group. The MC80-class Star Cruisers, could carry only up to 1,200 troops or roughly two Battalions.
The loss exchange, such as when GNS Resolution destroyed ISD Torment at the Battle of Naboo during Operation CINDER, the Empire lost a hefty number of men and resources whereas the loss of Resolution herself would have been a blow compared to the relatively lighter New Republic losses of personnel.
Palpatine tried to incorporate the best of both the Republic and Confederate doctrine. Instead, he incorporated the worst.
The Confederacy would have laughed off any losses suffered by the Rebellion. Their droids and ships were so easily replaced, the Rebellion would have been pissing in the wind.
The Republic would have bitch slapped the Rebellion. Clones are just too competent, and Venators are too flexible. Each one carries hundreds of fighters, with quality pilots. X-Wing hit and run attacks would be useless.
The Empire? Most of their fleet power was tied up in big, expensive, inflexible battleships. Their troops weren't as expendable as droids, or as capable as clones. Worst of both worlds.
incinerator950
What are you talking about? Name one time in canon where a Venator needed to be "babysat" by a Victory class. Usually, Venators opperated independently. One example of that was the battle of Coruscant, where Venators made up the vast majority of the fleet. Also in that battle, they had more than enough firepower to slug it out with other ships.
Since we're talking about fighting the Rebellion, which relies on hit and run fighter attacks, the Venator would be the superior choice to counter that. It's not like the Rebellion has the firepower to beat the Republic in conventional warfare to begin with.
@@drksideofthewal Well, I believe you are mistaken. The Venator is literally the complete OPPOSITE of flexable. It's great at being a carrier,and basically worthless everywhere else.
Also Venator's armament is the biggest joke since Rey's Jedi training. While this wouldn't be a problem If they were used as they should have been used (as back line carriers) It became a problem when the Republic used them as frontline capital ships.
And assuming the Venator's fighters still had the clone and Jedi pilots for the time of the Empire is simply unrealistic
@@ufukcangencoglu2279
That's a misconception. We see the Venator holding its own as a front line battleship on many occasions, even besting the Providence class in a broadside.
This idea that the Venator is "worthless" at being anything except a carrier comes from a poor understanding of its specifications. IE. People assume the ship lacks firepower, because it doesn't have as many individual Turbolasers.
However, the Venator's primary weapons, the 8 dual heavy turbolasers, are equal in firepower to the main battery of an ISD. In real world terms, we would call the Venator an "all big gun" battleship. It's this design philosophy that seperates the dreadnaughts from the pre-dreadnaughts.
Which, is yet more evidence that the Imperial's design philosophy regressed. They seemed more concerned with numbers of canons, like an 18th century ship of the line, rather than quality. Plus, they placed all their chips on the ISD being a battleship rather than a carrier, another regressive choice. We've seen time and time again the Imperial's weakness against fighter craft.
@@drksideofthewal yeah, in the Clone Wars TV show we see it could take down multiple Munificent class heavy cruisers and Recusant destroyers, and those outgunned the Venator by numbers of weapons, showing that the Venator, while not having that many turbolasers, was a powerful all around ship that show having more guns doesn't necessarily means you are outgunned
Although I will add some aditional weapons weapons ti my personal Venator to fight big imperial ships and fend off better against the Providences while keeping its 8 heavy dual turbolasers as main weapons
that is exactly the ISD . the venator was too undergunned for its size and the main punch was their fighters. an imperial venator is just a carrier throwing out a bit more ties.high maintence for a glorified carrier and since they dont have the republic starfighters its basically game over and the rebels had a breeze blowing them up. and not the venator flak wasnt that good this is why they needed fighters on them
"Scramble all TIE squadrons immediately" - the one phrase which, if said frequently enough, would have turned it all around.
"Just send every triangle ship we have to blow up worlds that don't like us." -- Palpatine.
Logan Smith Also, now with no moon!
Ain’t no way you posted this before TRoS 💀
He just needs to take a few pages from the Combine repression playbook and his Empire would be faring better on a daily basis.
Lieutenants captaining a ship while a Captain being responsible for a small fleet? I didn't realise Star Wars was that much more realistic compared to most science fiction.
Whaa? Where does this happen?
Most navies, Captain is both a rank and a position, but most ships don't have the two match because the ships are too small to justify it. Ships can have as low as a Lieutenant 3rd Class taking the position of captain if they're small enough, while an aircraft carrier will have either a commodore or admiral responsible for both it and its entire fleet.
Commodore are mostly an unused rank. However Admirals don't captain ships. This is one of the oldest Naval traditions. Also these days a 3rd Leutenant is normally called Ensign.
Though this puts us at risk of entering the whole: "what is a midshipman in the modern Navy?"
debate.
We definitely see a bit of a clash between sail Navy and modern Navy with the formal addition of Commander rank. In many ways by adding Commanders we lose the need for midshipman rank by a great degree.
Something Halo gets right. at least for the UNSC, then again the covenant are aliens and as such would have different positions and rankings.
I imagine it went like this:
Sensible Admiral: Alright Emperor, we have designed a large and powerful capital ship that adheres to the Tarkin Doctrine. However, I’ve noticed it’s not exactly all that practical, and that destroyed super weapon drained funds from our more practical ships...and tie fighters also suck.
Emperor: Eh, that’s fine, we’ll just build MORE EVIL FLYING NACHOS!
Sensible Admiral: Uh, sir, I’m not sure that-
Emperor: And we’ll build EVEN BIGGER EVIL FLYING NACHOS!
Sensible Admiral: uh...
Emperor: And we obviously need MORE SUPER WEAPONS.
Sensible Admiral:..That’s a horrible idea (gets stabbed by Vader)
Emperor: Anyone else want to question me!?
Admiral J pretty much so
One of the things I really don't like about Star Wars is that the bad guy ships are just given HUGE problems and flaws while the good guy ships basically have no flaws. This is a problem with Prequel and Original Trilogies.
In the Prequels,Seperatist ships are not only just hugely more expensive than the ships of the Republic for no reason,their Droid army is made up of droids dumber than most kids AND their shipds like the Malovelence are just thrown out in the open with no escort or anything.
In the Original Trilogy,the Imperial shipds like the ISD and the Executor are just given stupid flaws for no reason,their army is made up of idiots,AND we still have the "Throw out your large stuff out in the open for no reason!" problem going on.
And while It is really hot and hip to hate on the Sequel Trilogy this is one of the things It gets right in my opinion.
@@ufukcangencoglu2279 Given that they were ordered by the same faction that decided a moon-sized planet-exploder was a good investment, maybe it's less of a writing error and more of a consistent character flaw?
_Rebels_ really hammered down on this type of strategy to the point where at times the Empire had *no* strategy whatsoever. They were reactive rather than proactive when it came to the Rebels such as Phoenix Squadron. It was such a poor representation of the Empire especially of what it was at this time. Everything had to revolve around the plot armor of the main cast.
If you haven't done it, I would love to see you do an analysis of the tactics of the Battle of Nar Shadda that occurred in the book _The_ _Hutt_ _Gambit_ . It was a really good plan and the strategy that the smugglers created for themselves to fight against the numerous but severely under-equipped Imperial task force.
Great idea, loved The Hutt Gambit!
Personal shield technology compared: Dune, Halo, Star Wars and Stargate
Good idea
Halos the best in my opinion
BXOTROT ___ Halo's is good but clearly expensive as very few Spartans got them.
DrearyPlane8 not unless you use bit coin lol
BXOTROT ___ As we all know Lord Hood was an avid cryptocurrency investor as well as commander of the UNSC fleet.
Imperial tactics: throw a shit ton of metal cheese wedges at the enemy and hope they're lactose intolerant
The Imperial Starfleet's biggest problem is that it went for flash over bang. Updated Victory class Star Destroyers would have been much cheaper and, widely deployed, more effective than the "go big or go home" Tarkin Doctrine.
The Imperial class Star Destroyer was designed to engage corvettes, frigates and cruisers, not the superb star fighters of the Rebel Alliance. The Empire's own star fighter corps was lacking in good fighters and had to make do with swarm tactics. By making smaller Captial ships complemented with better fighter models like the TIE Interceptor and TIE Defender the Empire could have both countered the Rebels hit-and-run strategy and more effectively patrolled Imperial Space. Big ships have blind spots and weakness that smaller fighters can exploit. The standard Imperial tactic when faced with Rebel fighters is launch their own fighters and hope the rebels are overwhelmed. Yes, it's difficult to destroy an ISD but if it can't defend itself from attack then it really doesn't matter how long it takes. Sooner of later SOMEONE will get lucky.
Id like to see more Doge tbh.
You mean High Admiral Korgi, commander of Bork-Bork Sector Battlefleets?
weldonwin no, Doge
Much Doge, very requested.
The battle of Scarif really showed how the Empire had the advantage as long as they were aggressive. The Scarif defense force did a pretty good job standing up to the Rebel fleet and army, aided in large part by how big the garrison was. As soon as the Imperials deployed overwhelming reinforcements the Rebel fleet was in big trouble. If the reinforcements had arrived sooner the Rebels would never have had a chance.
The battle of Hoth too, even if it wasn't a total victory because the Imperial leadership made mistakes early on and had to improvise, really shows how much damage the Imperials can do if they fight aggressively.
The Empire simply needed more ships. Yes, more. Get rid of like 20,000 of your ISDs and use the materials to get like 60,000 Victory-sized warships. Star destroyers have been nothing but gross overkill. You don't need to completely eradicate a planet's biosphere to keep them in line through fear. Bombing one, two major cities to dust will do the trick just fine. And of course, smaller vessels would be much better suited to deal with the small, mobile rebel warbands.
You could effectively combat staffing shortages by retiring manned TIEs in favour of droid starfighters. The Tri-Fighter of the clone wars was an impressive proof of concept for how powerful such units could be. Don't throw all that military technology away.
And of course don't build your stupid Death Stars.
You cant oppress half a nation to support the other half the empire would have collapsed regardless
When Tarkin blew up the planet half of the galaxy went in open rebellion the empire was unmanageable it was only held together by darth sidious Thrawn even said so also Vader could never rule the empire it was made to fall apart after sidious death
incinerator950 The reasons ISDs was made was due to the imperial navy is a fleet of a nation it was made to fight other nations/planets who would fight in capital v capital ship warfare not rebels. You can see in any engagement ISDs wipe them floor with Rebel ships unless their capital ship specified killers or simply got plot armor
Victory-class star destroyers actually had very fast hyperdrives. It was only in normal space that they were so slow. They could actually reach the battle zone much faster than any other ship of their size or larger. If you pair them with interdictors, they can be very effective
Try not blowing up your own citizens planets for a start LOL
Last I checked, Alderaan was pretty much the opposite of an open rebellion. They were loyal to the Empire.
I think just occupying rebellious planets would've sufficed. Blowing up a planet full of innocents just angers everyone else. Occupying a planet with suspicious rebel activity would be enough. I mean, if the Empire really had so many Star Destroyers (Imp. II's), then why not just put one or two over the planet? Less killing and making enemies that way.
The rebels stole most of there ships and had spies everywhere
Surely you must realise that a population's leaders don't always have views that reflect the population itself. At the very least, Alderaan's people were for the most part pacifist.
Furthermore, fear only works in the short term. When it becomes clear that your world may end up being destroyed regardless of what you do, you'll find that people will be far more willing to stand up against those who threaten you. In fact, this is exactly what happened when Alderaan was destroyed. Other worlds realised that if a peaceful world could be destroyed with no warning, despite not doing anything wrong, then they might as well throw their lot in with the rebels.
Spoken like a true despot.
You could argue that the Empire never took the Rebel Alliance seriously, and therefore never saw a need to stray from its inflexible grand strategy of oppression. However, after the battle of Yavin, it should have figured out that the Rebels were a force to be reckoned with and should have adapted to their hit and run tactics more thoroughly by the time the batlle of Endor came. (Especially considering the knowledge that Vader and the Emperor had that Luke Skywalker was leading them.)
Don't suppress everyone lol
O.O WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?
He who tries to defend everything, defends nothing.
Justin Y. HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU EVERYWHERE
More like oppress
I'm concerned for your mental well-being.
A variation of your "How much did the imperial navy cost ?" Video that you did a few weeks back.
"How I would have spent the imperial navy budget".
What would the fleet composition be if you were in control. Restriction is only forces available to the Imperials, including ships that they could have got but didn't mass produce, and any legacy Republic ships they still had (unlikely to be used though, but still. And I miss you, dear Acclumator and Venator). No First Order ships.
So the concept isn't how I would construct the ultimate killer battlefleet centered around a crazy expensive Eclipse Star Destroyer with flanking Super Star destroyers, it's how you would compose the entire fleet based around a bang for your buck concept for day to day Imperial duty (with some mobile groups).
Now Tarkin has been locked in a room and Thrawn is busy making excuses claiming that Tarkin was "just here a minute ago", so you have a free hand.
Of course you're going to be using the Tie defender, but what number do you get vs the budget of basic Ties. And only Defenders ? They are hard to fly and pricey, maybe a cheaper non hyperdrive (but still shielded) Tie for planetary patrol, or Heavy fighter Ties as well.
Would you use any other Tie as well or would it be Defenders all the way down ?
Can I suggest that you break the video into two sections, the first being only canon ships (including the Raider II Corvette), the second including legends ships (but only the realistic stuff, Crusader Corvettes, Lancer Frigates ect) with maybe a final third half (!?) including old Sith designs that have had their systems updated to modern Yarvin tech such as the Harrower class Dreadnought fitted with state of the art shields, weapons, ect.
Your mission awaits you, Grand Accountant …
The major issue with the Empire was the fact it was horrifically run and structured. for example there's not enough ranks to maintain control of a fleet. There was too few officer positions and officers are expected to do far too much with too many resources. This may sound silly however when you think about it, a singles star Destroyer has a lot of personnel on it, a lot to manage so if you were a captain and you had to command two or three star Destroyers and perhaps an entire army of troops and then you had smaller ships included. It's a lot to manage that's a lot to deal with. where perhaps another rank such as a commander who would be second in command of a command ship and they have some responsibilities also to command the strike group would be a massive help. Then the additional problem you run into if there's an admiral and a grand moff or a moff, who's in charge? and onboard a Star Destroyer fairly often there would be a captain or a general who would be in charge of the ground army who than would have authority over the strike group?
heres how I would do it:
I think some of the empire superweapons were actually worthwhile, although certainly not all of them. There is a very major advantage to being able to wipe out a planet in one go, but, you dont need to literally "destroy" the planet, just wiping out all life on half of it is enough. Also, the Executor class star destroyer was sadly underpowered for its weight and not really worth the expense.
Therefore I would scratch the executor, galaxy gun, and death star designs, and instead go for the Eclipse as a sort of middle ground, since its an extremely powerful ship, very fear-inspiring, and at least as strategically useful as a death star. I would build ten Eclipses, and a thousand ISD's, and organize these into ten fleets containing a hundred ISD's and a single eclipse. These fleets would not be tied down to any one place but would instead be on a constant campaign as long as there was any systems left in the galaxy to fight. The mon calamari shipyards and endor would both feel the full brunt of this force.
On the other hand, the sector defense fleets would be radically altered. I would order the construction of a medium-sized warship that could move quickly and have a large amount of both point defense and anti-capital weapons to be built, similar in size to the Victory but updated and with a more balanced role. Then I would order the construction of a slightly larger carrier ship. I agree with the empire not putting hyperdrives on their fighters, because I dont really see what advantage they would get from them, but I would invest in much more powerful fighters. Not necessarily huge amounts of TIE defenders (although I love them) but at least something that could remain competitive with X-wings. Maybe a development of the TIE interceptor, TIE hunter, TIE phantom, or TIE advanced.
It should possess shields, extreme speed and maneuverability, and enough firepower to easily destroy an x-wing. A missile launcher would be a good addition too. IT doesnt necessarily need to be powerful enough to target enemy capital ships and I dont think bombers are really necessary; The fighter is essentially just to help hunt down smaller rebel forces, the larger ones are targets for imperial capital ships.
At any rate the sector defense fleets would not possess any full-sized star destroyers, only medium sized cruisers and corvettes, well suited to dealing with fighters, corvettes, and cruisers. The larger ships would be reserved for roaming eclipse-led fleets that would act as an unstoppable force of annihilation, sort of in line with the tarkin doctrine but in a more sensible manner.
Having said all that, I would also maintain programs for highly advanced and powerful hyperdrive-equipped starfighters, such as the TIE defender or TIE avenger, and use them as more of a special operations unit, in concert with similarily built special-ops corvette sized ships. These would make up a much smaller portion of the fleet but would be deployed to the most secret of imperial assets. In a situation like where the empire lured the rebels to the second death star, I would use ships like this primarily- Extremely elite, powerful fighters and corvettes, not to control large portions of the galaxy but to defend very small, very important systems.
Oh, and: This one is just easy pickings at this point, but developing droid fighters and infantry would be worthwhile. Not the height of expendability like B1's, but not something super elite like dark trooper phase 2 was. Something that could be produced in large enough numbers to make up a large proportion of imperial footsoldiers, while powerful enough to pose a substantial threat. Probably something roughly equivalent to a super battle droid. Then the elite forces would be supplemented by clones. Volunteer soldiers would still be common, especially on backwater places, but droids would augment the firepower of occupation forces and clones would be trained for special ops roles (such as the aforementioned TIE defender fleet)
EDIT: I just now learned about the Sovereign-class Super Star Destroyer. That one seems more practical than the Eclipse as it probably costs less while having the same strategic viability. SO uh. Maybe use that one instead?
“... but let’s get back to talking about giant flying triangles.” Like Bill Cipher! 😉
leutennatns commanding smaller ships is actually fairly common, in the royal navy a smaller frigate would often be under the command of a lieutenant or commander (who was the "captain" of the ship in name and addressed as such but not in rank)
"Let's talk about giant floating triangles"
I subbed in the starship vs days because of giant floating triangles
Have better fighters.
Or just Point Defense would help
Or just put Thrawn in charge of everything and let him fix the Imperial Navy from top to bottom
Agreed, problem is something like the Defender is too expensive to replace the Fighter or Interceptor. However you could probably deploy several wings of Defenders to each oversector and deploy them so they can serve as a quick reaction force/ TIE SWAT unit. I would also add them to battlegroups assigned to hunt down rebel forces.
A real issue with the Imperial Navy, is that since it has ballooned out of control, even with the low cost ships and equipment and various corner cutting, the Navy is still unsustainably expensive to operate. I would posit that, while a TIE Defender is far more expensive to replace compared to an individual TIE N/1, what is the cost of replacing an entire SQUADRON of TIEs, lost in a single engagment, combined with the costs of training new pilots to fly them? TIE Defenders would be a vastly cheaper option in the long run, since you aren't having to replace them constantly, nor the pilots to fly them, simply because the Defenders are vastly more capable with much higher survivability.
My Ideal vision for the Imperial Navy would have mobile battlegroups, built around Arquitens light cruisers, carrying flights of TIE Defenders, supported by escorting Raider corvettes, with the ISDs serving as heavy hitters, to be held in reserve untill needed, rather than being the primary backbone of the fleet. The Arquitens, Raider and Defender combo, gives you a fast, flexible fleet configuration that can deal with the vast majority of situations the navy would encounter on a day to day basis and certainly would be far better suited to countering the Rebellion.
weldonwin Thrawn approved!
Well, to be honest, most imperial leadership were with their hands tied up, as the emperor was completely obcessed with insane projects, sith artifacts and the unknown regions...
I know it may seem bad to have lieutenants commanding ships rather than captains like it's supposed to be, but often times I've seen similar things happen in real life. It's probably more common than we think, and if we are talking about something the size of the Empire, there is probably no shortage of this. It takes time to build experience and turn someone into an officer. As far as I know, the Empire only existed after the clone wars for a few decades, so that really isn't very long for something ruling a galaxy, especially when real life armies on earth take years to update equipment.
The problem with implementing a flexible, clear organization topology for the Galactic Empire or any autocratic system is that doing so would create a threat to the autocrat.
Allowing flexible thinking and coordination between units without express permission from high command would also allow the military the flexibility to plot against the autocrat. That's why autocratic governments implement rigid, yet confusing and redundant hierarchies for their military and organs of power while also discouraging inter-unit and -departmental cooperation.
I’ve been reading Thrawn Alliances and until this video I didn’t realize that Commodore Faro of the Chimera was such a high ranking officer. She really likes to butt heads with the Commander of Vader’s 1st Legion who she technically outranks but that doesn’t mean much when your up against the commander of Vader’s personal Stormtrooper Legion.
I agree your strategy would definitely be WAY better than what the Imperial Navy did.
No it wouldn't. His strategy involves spending massive amounts of resources searching for the rebel fleet in 2.88*10^13 light years of mostly empty space. That's like trying to find a needle in a haystack, in a haystack factory, on a planet of haystack factories.
2.88*10^13 cubic light years
@Asier Etxeberria Irastorza the Death Star was probably the best use of resources, trying to hunt the rebels will never work
@Asier Etxeberria Irastorza if the Death Star was not destroyed by the assistance of actual space magic the empire would have won totally and completely, how does killing a few rebels on a strategically useless ice planet help anything
@Asier Etxeberria Irastorza except there wouldn’t be more attacks. The thought of rebellion becomes a lot less enticing when the consequence is your planet being destroyed meanwhile if you try to hunt the rebels they will just consistently replace there losses and potentially keep growing. Also at yavin they killed 90% of attacking rebel forces as opposed to yavin where they killed a bit of the rear guard and then everyone else escaped, also with the apparent poor quality of there guided munitions without space magic it is questionable whether they would be able to destroy it and that’s if they manage to get past the air defence
The Tarkin Doctrine had two fatal flaws that would ultimately lead to its failure. The first is that when a government rules through fear, there will come a time when the people hate their lives more than they fear death. It is at this point that fear-based tactics become virtually impossible. The second flaw is that the level of brutality required to maintain a fear-based system will inevitably lead to conscientious objectors amongst the enlisted men and even some of the officers. At this point, they're going to have insurrections, defections, and even a few coup d'etat attempt on their hands.
While you are mostly right I think you underestimate how good the ISD is. Its actually a very fast heavy cruiser/carrier hybrid with a huge troop capacity that doesnt suffer the "master of none" syndrome since the rebels were outclassed in anything short of a full fleet engagement. If tie fighters where better then I think the imperial navy would have been perfect for its job.
First off, I agree. The Imperial Navy wasn't flexible enough to counter the strategy of the Rebel Alliance; it wasn't designed to in the first place. But military leaders like Grand Admiral Thrawn demonstrated how effective the assets could be used. Also, I am suprised that Darth Vader did never come up with any real solution. (Is that actually true?) Even though Vader and Anakin Skywalker are two different personalities, does that mean he lost all of his military genius? Or was it just his submissevness to Sidious that stopped him from actually impling change? Maybe both Sith were just too blinded and arrogant to believe the sheer power of what they had could be overthrown. However the case, in my opinion, the real problem were the inner struggles for power. If just more High Admirals were like Admiral Yularen in the Clone War, the Navy, and probably all branches of the Imperial military, would have been way more effective.
As always, really impressed with your videos!
I especially love and appreciate your graphics, such as "Standard Imperial Formation". I love imagining fleets engaging each other and graphics like that add so much organization and detail to the battles! :-)
0:15 Corvete: Were gonna make it!!!
Star Destroyer: Get the fuck out of my way.
Another key issue that contributed to the fall of the empire was the fact that Palpatine did not plan on how he would be succeded after his death. He did not make any contingencies to name possible successors. In the Disney canon, this becomes even more appaling when you realize that Palpatine pretty much decided that his empire should die with him in case he died.
@incinerator950 He still didn't have a Succesion plan in he EU either. His plan was just "Blow-up the entire Empire ( other than the Deep Core fleet and the Galaxy Gun )--> Use the Deep Core Fleet and the Galaxy Gun to Blitzkrieg your way into Coruscant --> And try to win with that.
Not all that different from the canon Contingency.
Notification squad reporting in!
Gustavo Barbosa
Red 2 Standing by
Note 3 here, note 2 check callsigns
Gustavo Barbosa red 5 standing by
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Gustavo Barbosa Note 6, standing by
The Empire should have just built a crapton of Gladiator Star Destroyers and stocked them with fighters actually worth a crap. It's basically a reuse of the Republic's Venator spam strategy, but it worked pretty well against the C.I.S. Plus they look super cool.
Really a great video! Love the high level view of the Empire’s command and control structure.
I would love to see more of navel tactics videos there really interesting and helps me when I play starwars empire at war
As you've said in past videos, the fact that the Empires star fighters (tie's) didn't have hyperdrives was a big disadvantage in I guess fleet tactics aswell. Compared to rebel alliance who's star fighters could come out of hyperspace and go straight into battle is a huge advantage!! If the Empire did the same things would be much different. Imagine a bunch of star destroyers and couple hundred tie fighters coming out of hyperspace and into battle. Things be much different!!!
Superior insight as usual and I agree. The idea of oversectors and specialized fleets on its face isn't a bad idea but the problem was the sector and oversector commanders saw their territories as fiefdoms. They never concerned themselves with overall strategy and joint operation. Their blindness to this flaw is the greatest contributor to the downfall of the Empire. Had they worked together like it was supposed to it wouldn't have mattered that a rebel force hit a target in say the Black Sword Command and retreated if the areas surrounding it were willing to coordinate and make sure wherever the rebels fled an Imperial force would have been waiting on them and Black Sword ships were able to give chase outside their own area of operations.
Weren't the problems with the speed of Victory-class destroyers solved in the Victory II-class?
I know you'll get to this in the finale of the Vong sub-series. Won't stop me from going through the motions though. Anyways:
Can you breakdown what is by far the largest space battle in the entire franchise? *The* *Battle* *of* *Yuuzhan'tar!* I have made this request: Sixty-one times.
Hi I agree the empire and also the first order have bad tactics. Great video
At least the Empire had some strategy and tactics. The Emperor's plan would've worked if he hadn't trivialized the importance of the natives on the moon. Darth Vader's fleet was successful in tracking down and routing the Rebels on Hoth. The only blunder was that his commanding officer brought the fleet too close to the system and alerted the Rebels on the planet. Tarkin's and Vader's plan to allow Princess Leia and her rescuers to escape the Death Star relatively easy and track them to their base was a success but they didn't account for how quickly the Rebels would analyze and form a plan to attack and destroy the Death Star at its weakness. They nearly succeeded in stopping them too if it wasn't for the arrival of Han Solo at the last minute. Meanwhile, how close has the First Order managed to defeat the Rebels, I'm sorry, Resistance through superior tactics and planning? Once when they tracked the Resistance scout ships from Starkiller Base to the Ileenium system and then prepared to wipe them out? Then they blundered every opportunity they did when they chased after the Resistance fleet. If anything the First Order have no tactics to speak of.
Grand Admiral Thrawn The Empire still suffers from the weaknesses of its doctrine. The failures you mentioned wouldn't have even occurred with more flexible fleets. The rebels may not even have gotten as far as they did with a focus on smaller, more versatile ships and ground vehicles.
Granted, things rarely go exactly according to plan. Perhaps rather than saying those mistakes wouldn't occur I should have said they wouldn't have had as much if any impact.
With a better force, mistakes wouldn't have as much of an impact and battles that otherwise might be even odds would tilt in favor of the Empire. After a while the tide of the war would turn and the rebels would be worn down.
And all of this is ignoring obvious tactical blunders, some of which Eck has given entire videos to.
Good points. That could probably also have worked.
The Empire didn't have bad tactics, it had the wrong tactics. Imperial doctrine was built from the experience of the Clone Wars which was mostly ship-to-ship. The Empire was also too slow to react to the Rebellion until Death Squadron came along.
Absolutely loved this video! Love learning more about fleet organization and management.
Fallout prewar America Vs. Brotherhood of Nod at the start of the third Tiberium War
If superstar destroyers could offer logistical support to smaller roving patrols groups that could engage and stalked Rebel ships, I think that would have helped. Imagine if the Death Star had been really REALLY fast in hyperspace and could act as a logistical "mother ship" for a battlegroup(s) dedicated to taking on threats other than run of the mill security threats. It could have brought a LOT of mixed fire power, while the smaller roving patrols kept tabs on their prey. If the First Order could track ships in hyperspace then the Empire was probably at it as well. The Battle Station should have been a roving HQ/dockyard/support asset. With maybe planetary assault thrown in for fun.
Or dump a crap ton of fire power and pursuit ships in at a moments notice, then it could have had awesome shields as well. It might have been big and expensive but that kind of power generation could have had other uses, including industrial that could have been used in materials creation (like crystals and such for weapons) just to name one thing alone. Stalk away and out of sensor range of the solar system in the interstellar big black, and no one would ever quite be sure where it was, making any large scale attack potentially very risky.
I am just saying the big ball potential uses other than for housing a planet killing superlaser and it could still have been heavily armed enough to turn an Admiral's hair white at the thoughts of engaging it.. Star Forge anyone? What a waste.
Yes please do a video on battle tactics. The Navy was ok but in the films you don't see the smaller ships they would have had. I could see the need for more ships like the Vindicator heavy cruiser and the crusader corvette you spoke about before but ISDs played their part in taking down the big ships. Maybe the Empire should have kept the CIS droid Army/Navy around to help them. Imperial Army was ok but should have kept the old AT-ETs and AT-RTs around and they would have won more often. Plus a droid army would have helped with man power shortage.
Ur videos are amazing, I love the strategies, battle breakdowns, and everything Star Wars. KEEP IT UP, maybe do a Battle Of crait of what you WOULDVE done if u were either rebels or first order? But keep it up the great work!!
Replicators vs a Unified Star Wars universe (294th try now, *_I._** WILL NEEEEVER EEEVER GIVE UP on!!!)*
I respect your dedication, keep it up
Keep it up man
+Jacob Gale Thanks!
coming up on infra-red
294th? He's probably seen it and doesn't want to do it. You're better off not wasting your time.
Up-voted your comment so it gets more recognition.
I think the overall problem was with the leadership and self interest posture. Thrawn, Pellaoen, Parck, Daala, Rae Sloane, etc, are a few examples of excellent officers with the right mind and heart.
A conversation with me and Palpatine:
Me: why is most of your military budget spent on inflexible battleships?
Palpatine: big dorito good
All of a sudden I am reminded of the Stargate episode showing the difference between the P90 and staff weapon. One is a weapon of war, and one is a weapon of fear.
If I ever start to write my version of the story of the PC fighter game, the failure of the Tarkin doctrine is discussed after the battle Yavin, but the changes are very slow to come, but some are reflected in the game's story.
Thanks for the awesome vid eck
New imperial strategy idea for a force with two Star Destroyers (like at Scarif):
1. Advance ISD's to either side of the Rebel fleet, using tie fighters to screen them.
2. Rotate both ISDs by 90 degrees so that the dorsal sides both face Rebel fleet. Both starboard and port-side turbolaser batteries should now have a clear shot.
3. Annihilate Rebel scum with overwhelming Tarkin-Doctrine firepower.
What you think?
I think their organization demonstrates a general lack of trust between the different tiers of control, with each superseding tier operating to ensure that they maintained their position via fear while still trying to work their way up the ranks. Kind of an internal Tarkin Doctrine within the military structure. I could see under that sort of circumstances 'independent' fleets dedicated to hunting down dissidents being perceived as a direct threat to their own control over a system or sector by the commander of that system's/sector's fleet. Unless they were run by someone so far up the chain that the local commander was to afraid to interfere (Death Squadron when run by Vader as an example).
The fleets where not designed against fighting large fleets that could rival the empire on large campaign such as the seperatists. Instead they where acting as police or security force that was using large forces to hunt down and destroy smaller bands of pirates, warlords and rebel groups such as the crew of Ghost. That kind of battles would be easily managed by an admiral or planetary commanders whom could drawn forces from the individual fleets and solve issues by dispatching a Star Destroyer or two. Youll also has to remember that the system was going to be relaying heavily on fear - Fear for battle stations like the famous Death Star whom could wipe out entire systems of resistance if they show up.The shortcoming of that system was shown in the battle of Endor where a large imperial fleet of Star Destroyers could not work effective when facing a large rebel fleet after that fleet engaged them in point black range. They where also to heavily dependeble on large and centralised shields and support systems that could easily be destroyed.Once the shield generator on Endor was destroyed the ships of the fleet should have switched to theyre own individual shield generators for example. Johan.
8:41 _"I know I focused a lot more on strategy and asset placement rather than actual battle tactics..."_
The _Tooth to Tail_ ratio should never be ignored (Napoleon did that while invading Russia, and look what happened to him). Even in today's military, you need seven different people working in logistics for every one solider in the field.
Napoleon's armies actually had excellent logistics for their day. His failure in Russia is more down to him losing half his army to Typhus before the campaign started.
Youve got rank structure wrong. They are as follows Ensign, junior Lieutenant, Senior Lieutenant, Lieutenant Commander, Commander, Captain, Commodore, Vice Admiral, Admiral, Fleet Admiral, High Admiral, Grand Admiral.
Flag Officers Start at Commodore.
The first Thrawn novel Describes this Structure.
The Shape of a Star Destroyer Favors Forward Firing. All weapons firing on a single target when in range rather than half. So if there are three turbolasers and one ion cannon emplacement on each side of the ship and one turbolaser on the most forward part of the ship you will have 9 batteries firing on one ship 2 ion cannons and 7 turbolasers with varying numbers of barrels.
You dont want to broadside a faster ship as you have made it easier for you to be flanked from behind
Yeah SW has some issues. Especially in Starfighter ranks which use Airforce/Army ranks until major then add commander to avoid Leutenant Colonel, and I think they even throw Ensign into the mix sometimes too. Adding a full additional rank since they also have flight officers.
Suggestion: Video on First Order Tactics and strategy in comparison to the Empire
I wholeheartedly agree with this demonstration. Had you attended the Coruscant Imperial University, you'd've graduated with flying colours and have your own ship, by now.
(39th request) 1 CAS Class Assault Carrier with 4 CSS Class Battlecruisers and 4 SDV-class heavy corvettes VS 1 Bellator Class Super Star Destroyer (yes i look it up and the Bellator Class has Fighters about 100 of them) 4 Imperial 2 class Star Destroyers and 4 Dreadnought Class Heavy cruisers (theses ships use to be Victory 2 class Star Destroyers but that would give the Empire too much an edge in the battle so i made them Dreadnought class Heavy cruisers instated too make it equal in a way)
I think that "Just Star Destroyers" would be a perfectly sensible strategy for the Empire to take. Maybe replace a few turbolasers with point defence cannons, TIE fighters, or parasite frigates, but overall, having one ship design that you can put into basically any situation is a logistical godsend.
Couldn't have asked for a better video!
UNSC Home Fleet from Halo vs Factory Station Room 101 from Neal Asher´s Polity, Room 101 is in it´s state right before the prador launched their attack at Room 101 (including full runcible support) , the goal of the UNSC is to destroy Room 101 and the goal of Room 101 is to destroy the UNSC Home Fleet. Attempt 7
Sure. Let's pull our sector defense fleets to hunt down an enemy that we can't even find in the vastness of space. I'm sure we'll stumble across the rebel scum, and the citizens back home won't revolt due to limited policing force.
Also, the imperial fighters didn't fail because they lacked TIE defenders. They failed because they lacked even a reasonable amount of TIE interceptors. Even the imperial fleet at the Battle of Endor only had 30% of its fighters as interceptors, and that was a high quality fleet. The Empire just needed more time to produce and integrate the next generation.
honestly l really love this type of vid, keep up the great work!
I’d like to focus more on building Imperial heavy fighters like TIE defenders/hunters/phantoms, corvettes & frigates as support, patroll & raiding operations, and funding spec ops like Stormcommandos, Deathtroopers & the Darktrooper project.
Standardisation by building star destroyers was one thing they got right. By building mostly star destroyers it would've made production in the shipyards far easier than to build several different types of ship. The general idea there is the main battleship doctrine (coined that myself) even if the star destroyer wasn't the best at doing everything.
I liked the idea of sectors with their own defense fleets. What I would have done is taken the numbered fleets, like Thrawns 7th fleet, make them powerful enough to be a major threat but have them commanded by someone with the Authority to take control of sector assets. I wouldn’t have made them Grand Admirals all becasue I think that should be a special rank. Sector fleets should be commanded by admirals and numbered fleets by, say, High Admirals with the occasional Grand Admiral who’s proven their worth. High admirals would then require the ability to overrule Moffs on military matters. They already outrank Admiral so no issue their. Grand Admirals would revert back to the old ranking structure where they were essentially the supreme military leader wherever they were. It didn’t matter if a Governor, Moff or Grand Moff was in town the Grand Admiral had complete authority on military matters. One thing I didn’t like with the reintroduction of Thrawn in Rebels and the new books was how he seemed to be subservient to Grand Moff Tarkin and to a degree Governor Price. In the book Thrawn allegiance Grand Admiral S and Thrawn were both taking direction from Tarkin, Director Krennic seemed to have sufficient political sway to at least make demands of Grand Admiral S and Governor Havlen was ordering Grand admiral S around like he was a sector fleet. That should not happen to a Grand Admiral. Yes I get it was their sector or project or whatever but they were commanding individual assets that were their to solve a problem they couldn’t with their own fleets.
I really wish when I play empire at war I could do more rebel style strategy, instead of always doing pitched battles being able to damage ships in hit and runs, or hitting supply areas, or being able to hide on planets instead of the empire knowing everywhere I am
makes it hard to play the more cannon style rebel game
2nd comment, 10th viewer
109th Attempt:
Reapers vs Yuuzhan Vong
ECKHARDTSLADDER: Flying Giant Triangles, Giant Circles, and more
Next one could be "How NOT to Take over a Galaxy - The Strategy and Tactics of the First Order." Boy, that would be a riot!
V-Wing vs. Tie Fighter
Has there been a what if video on what the Empire might look like without the Tarkin Doctrine?
I've tossed around the concept of after the first Death Star being destroyed, Vader finds his kids, kills the Emperor, and causes a coup against "Loyalists" who still follow the Tarkin Doctrine, while leading as much more of an iron fisted benevolent dictator (It was for an RPG setting, some things just had to be accepted). But I was never really sure what "Vader's Empire" would then look like as a whole other than easing up on xenophobia and cracking down on the slave trade, less rule by fear and thus in theory stopping the rebellion.
Roving battlegroups are a must. Ships have hyperdrives, they should be used otherwise all the ship ends up being is a mobile defence platform and given how damn good Star Wars hyperdrives are a mobile defence is definitely an option.
Instead. GET THE HIGH GROUND!
Obi -Wan Kenobi space is the ultimate high ground...
Christian Blanchard you fool, there is no up or down in space. The only way to get the high ground is by tapping into the spiritual aspect of the High Ground, finding peace with Obi-Wan Kenobi and annihilating your enemies.
The Federation Fleet at Wolf 359 (Star Trek TNG) vs The Rebel Alliance Fleet at the Battle of Yavin (Legends)
Attempt 20
I love it ... giant flying triangles ... XD
I would rate the imperial martial method poorly. They were too inflexible, too focused on the taking fear based doctrine with too little proof of said doctrines effectiveness.
Hey, member when the Victory class was the largest starship capable of atmospheric flight?
Member when the TIE Defender was discontinued because of a massive civil war and the chance of the design being stolen by the Rebels and Pirates?
Member when Imperial war droids were called Dark Troopers and could decimate an entire Rebel base with maybe a single loss?
Member when the Rebels thought it was a major victory to sabotage and destroy a single ISD instead of having one small band from Lothal take out a half dozen easily?
Thanks for the intel Eck. It will prove to be most useful.
Please do a galactic versus battle between
2M Saber class hover tank(Star Wars),
UNSC Scorpion tank(Halo),
Mammoth MK III(C&C) and
Baneblade(WH40K)(I asked for this battle before and everyone screamed that they wanted the baneblade)
Personally I think what the Empire could've done was keep the Venators in frontline service instead of replacing them with Victory and Imperial Star Destroyers, saving some money on bulking their fleets with Star Destroyers, and using the money they saved to stuff them with better TIEs, giving them more effective screens against Rebel Strikecraft while also giving the imperial navy more ships for basically free. And if you still wanted to throw around a lot of Victory and Imperial Star Destroyers, having them be escorted by even a single Venator would give them a massive fighter screen to protect against rebel fighters, with the benefit of the Venators guns still being decent for anti-ship warfare and point defense.
Ultimately I feel that the empire was trying to fight the clone wars all over again, in that war the star destroyers and other ships would have been effective. However the battlefield had changed and like so many real world powers thought history they did not change with it
Type-47A(H2) scarab vs type-47B(H3,reach,odst) scarab vs Banished scarab vs Volatile scarab
In the end, I think what they needed MOST was a focus on smaller ships and fighters.
Or build and use proper ships. They used the ISD as freaking carrier! It was a battleship, which should inflict heavy damage to the enemy with its main guns. The empire ussualy never fires more then 20 shots per ISD in a battle, despite the fact, that an ISD has 70+ turbo lasers. An ISD carrys how ever only 70 of the worst fighters in Star Wars. The imperial officers on the ISDs probably think, they fly a Venator ...
+wargearinternational
Actually it would help as much as what I said...Yeah it would be leagues better than what they do, but the ISD's are not suited to counter rebel tactics. Their only real defense against fighters are their own fighters, and we all know how well that shit works.
Still, if the empire had used its ISD properly, they would have buchered the moncalamari cruisers and rebell support ships.
Very true, but they would need to find them first. And even as they find those ships, they'd still need ships to properly protect against fighters, without costing ludicrous amounts of money.
They definitely had the ships types to do that, they just needed to make a crap ton more.
I agree over all, but:
Palpatine's Empire might have fallen a lot earlier if it hadn't done this - why? Because this, the Oversectors, the Moffs and Grand-Moffs was what kept Palpatine in power! The Moffs were always fighting with each other (not with battleships and troops, but trying to undermine each other etc.) and thus they couldn't band together to take out Palpatine! Hell, Palpatine's trap for the Rebell Alliance almost worked! Hell, Leia herself said in the EU: Had the Empire built more Inderdictors instead of pure Star Destroyers? Then they would have won easily (pair each SD with at least one Interdictor (doesn't matter which type!) and send those out to hunt Rebells :) )
Also: No scrapping SDs, hell, keep everything smaller than those damn Deathstars and invest whatever they cost into Interdictors and Starfighters and BAM, the Rebell Alliance is FINISHED!
For what the Empire wanted, the Imperial Navy had the right idea but poor execution. What’s more threatening: one massive Imperial Star Destroyer with little to no support fleet, or a couple Venators with a proper support fleet to back them up?
The Tarkin Doctrine could have worked, but the Empire relied too heavily on what RPG players like to call “big dicc swingin’”; that is, using a build that promotes using the biggest weapons possible. To use the Tarkin Doctrine to its fullest, you need to be adaptable. The Imperator was good enough for a proper warship. But an Interdictor with Venator support and Dreadnaught cruisers peppered in for point-defense? Ain’t no way Solo or Hera can get away from that.
You should make a serie in whitch you explain how to defeat every Star Wars or halo faction maybe making examples of other factions that could beat that specific faction
The empire doesn’t have bad tactics, they have plot armor tactics
Dude best outro ever
The way that I would run my cold space Navy would be to make it a small task force based around a strike carrier with around 120 fighters 100 bombers 30 assault shuttles. 2 battlecruisers for ship to ship combat as well as 6 cruisers, 20 frigates half specialised for anti fighter duty the other half assault frigates, about 40 Corvettes for anti fighter and picket duty also as fast attack and heavy bombardment of fortified installations in preparation for ground attack
Inperal navy they had the tools but for reasons like plot armor they were not used to the best of there ability. like you said a few more groups like death squadron activity running around hunting rebels with the jurisdiction to of open season were ever they wanted or just a bigger fleet going after the rebels main shipyards at mon calamari and putting more pressure on their corporate supporters and maybe getting a hold of the plans to the Mandalorian Crusader-class corvettes and using the vindicator as there main carrier other than the heavily sabotaged Quasar Fire-class cruiser you may have had a different rebellion war.
I would've approved the tie defender project and begin training for good pilots/mass produce defenders
Great video as always!
I think that because we focus mainly on what we see in the books and movies, we tend to loose the fact that it's a very limited viewpoint. We only get two points of view, the Imperial view and the Alliance view. There's a lot of other factions within the galaxy that one should take into consideration. Not so much what their ships/fleets were, but that we know that they existed. We know that those factions existed because they were referred to in the conference on Death Star I.
Throughout history, most generals prepare for the next war by fighting the last war. Sidious basically fought the "last war" against himself, so it would go how he wanted it to go. While this is true, one should also take into account the lessons that Star Wars galactic history would teach however, that Sidious's strategy wasn't really wrong, since their history of warfare was very similar to that bout of shadowboxing. Sidious had reasonably good cause to believe that any enemy that would fight against his Empire would do so the same way every other major naval engagement happened in the past hundred thousand years, large capital ships vs large capital ships with masses of star fighters and smaller ships as screening units.
Only problem was, the Alliance to Restore the Republic read that play book, and decided to chuck it through the nearest air lock and use it for target practice. The Alliance designed their fleet to specifically counter those large capital ship heavy fleets, and did so very effectively through the use of starfighters and other small, quick, nimble, highly mobile ships. Another large portion of their fleet strength came from stolen Imperial ships to the point where one of their admirals was noted as having said that he enjoyed destroying rebel ships, but he'd like to some day destroy one that the Empire hadn't built. The Alliance stole smaller Imperial ships that were primarily carriers. The Nebulon-B frigate, a very small ship with at least two squadrons of starfighters, was their most common target for theft, but they never passed up the opportunity to steal other ships like the Quasar Fire-class cruiser that had rather light fire power, but carried up to four squadrons of starfighters, the same as a Victory-class Star Destroyer, or the Imperial Ton-Falk-class escort Carrier which carried six squadrons, the same as an Imperial-class Star Destroyer.
So, you had an Imperial Warbook and Table of Equipment that was designed to be highly effective against any of the other polities in the galaxy, and you've built tens of thousand of starships and millions of fighters to create that ToE & Warbook. The Imperial Army and Navy really would have crushed any other military force in the galaxy. That much capital expenditure, though, is not easily modified to fight a specific enemy, especially one that is statistically insignificant when compared to everyone you're trying to frighten into submission with your huge fleet. It's just not possible to restructure the fleet in a short period of time to be effective against the smash & grab tactics that the Alliance preferred. Sidious wasn't just blowing smoke up his own backside when he called the Rebels insignificant. The Alliance had a couple hundred capital ships, several times that number in corvettes and other light screening units, and several thousand starfighters. The Alliance was NEVER going to win a ship-to-ship war with the Empire. If they tried, they would have been squished, just like any other polity in the galaxy, it's WHY the Empire built their fleets the way they did. But they did the one thing that all those other fleets could not have done, they used small strike teams, swarms of starfighters, and small group tactics to achieve constant but low level victories, leading up to the strike against Death Star I, and wound up doing much the same in order to take out Death Star II, and miraculously managing to kill Sidious in the process. That triggered an Imperial Civil War that the Alliance took advantage of, picking off & liberating Imperial Sector after Imperial Sector using their allied Fleets, like the Corellians and the Mon Calamari. Each Sector that they liberated allowed them to pick off the next sector, and the Imperial fleets were basically too busy fighting each other to effectively deal with the Alliance Fleet.
Basically, without the death of the Emperor and Vader and the civil war that it sparked, the Alliance would have remained an insignificant force for many years yet as they tried to turn their secret resistance alliance into an actual military alliance large enough to fight what to them would be the clone wars all over again.
I think there are several largely positive concepts of the Empire's Fleet you are overlooking. One being commonality and uniform capital ships, fighters and unit types amongst all sector fleets. A tie fighter pilot can transfered to a completely different unit or ship and need no additional training. Another agile positive being the transfer of personnel to any one of the Empire's thousands of Star Destroyers while maintaining the ability to operate and understand all of the ships systems with out the need for retraining.
The Empire's Fleet structure was also dictated largely impart by having to do more than what the Rebel Alliance had to do. Namely, defending ship lanes, policing local sectors, offensive campaigns, and maintaining and transporting effective ground planetary units. Thus the Empire's Fleet structure surrounding a more generalist capital ship, the Star Destroyer, that's more than capable in all these categories, modular in structure, and familiar to all throughout the entire fleet is a largely huge bonus in logistical ability that has enormous flexibility that you are overlooking.