So I recently persuaded the wife to let me buy Revell's Republic Star Destroyer model and I started a rules thread for that a few days ago...

But my question now is how many rebel fighters would it realistically take to destroy a Star Destroyer. A quick search at wookieepedia will tell you that there are a billion different variants of SD, but Im talking about the 1600 meter Imperial I or II class SDs which I believe are the ones featured in the movies, ie the HUGE SDs, not the smaller ones like the 900m Victory Class.

Its also important to define what "destroy" means. I guess, what Im going for it to remove its combat effectiveness. I served in the US Marine Corps, so I know that it is important to maintain combat effectiveness, if you cant fight then it doesnt matter if you're still alive, you cant take your objective. But I was with tanks, not on a ship, so I dont really know how ship operations work....I imagine that SDs are capable of sustaining massive amounts of external damage before it explodes or renders its guns inoperable. If it was near a star/planet/moon/anything with a large amount of gravity I could see destroying its propulsion and then causing it to crash into said star/planet/big thing, but i imagine it would take a while if the ship was quiet a ways away...

So the Rogue Squadron games (which I love so much) will tell you that a single B-wing and his wingmen can take out a SD. This doesnt seem very realistic to me. Sure, during real life naval warfare, a single very well placed bomb has been enough to sink gigantic ships and that could also apply to SDs, but that doesnt happen very often, and its a whole lot of luck.

Not to mention the number of squadrons of Tie Fighters it could pump out...

RotJ shows us epically that a single A-wing flying into the bridge of a sheildless Super SD will cause it to crash into the nearest thing "thats no moon". But I would imagine that aside from killing the command crew, destroying the bridge isnt always guarranteed to put the war vessel out of commission. Im sure there are contigency plans for that kind of thing. If you had a relatively new crew, killing the command crew would pretty effectively disable the entire ship for quiet some time, but if the crew and their officers were experienced they would know instantly how to react.

I hope you guys can understand what Im going for.... How about this: You are a squadron leader of a number of rebel fighters/bombers/nothing bigger than the rebel transport. And there is a lonely Imperial II SD hunting for you. How exactly do you get rid of the problem....

"Two fighters against a star destroyer" should be fine.

You had to know someone was going to say it.

Seriously though, an imperial II SD had a complement of 72 tie fighters, at a guess I would say you would want at least double that in attacking fighters to stand a chance, if you didn't have capital ship support.

For a game though, I suspect balancing the game stats for the SD and 12-15 TIEs vs 400-500 points of attacking rebels would be an enjoyable and not unreasonable scenario.

It would seem that the bare minimum amount of force required to take out a super star destroyer is exactly one unlucky (or fanatical) pilot in an A-Wing.

But seriously, I recall in one of the X-Wing games a mission where you had to take out one of the regular size destroyers. In the mission, the player was flying an X-Wing. The first objective was to knock out the two shield generators each of which took something like 3-4 torpedos to destory. Then the player along with maybe half a dozen X-Wings flew cover as numerous waves of Y-Wings jumped in and unloaded their full complement of torpedos (8 torpedos each I believe) on the now unshielded star destroyer's hull. All told it was probably 2-3 dozen Y-Wing loads of ordnance to take the ship out.

My numbers are probably off. It's been close to 20 years since I last flew the mission.

I wonder how many replies to this topic are going to have a second paragraph that starts with "But seriously..."

Realistically? Realistically you never engage a Star Destroyer with any number of fighters.

You turn around and fly away as fast as you possibly can and go find something poorly defended to attack.

You're waging a war of insurrection here. Not trying for a high score.

I think this quote from Wookieepedia is quite accurate:

Imperial-class Star Destroyers have featured prominently in many Star Wars computer games. However, they have generally been "toned-down" to allow the player some chance of defeating them with a starfighter. Some of these game mechanics have included shooting sensor globes and reactor bulbs with your starfighter to bring down the whole ship.

In other words, you are going to need a TON of ships. If I remember correctly, in Bacta War, it took an entire squad of X-wings to unload all their torpedoes on a Victory I Star Destroyer to overload one side of its shields. At this point the VSD could roll to the other side and continue fighting (and the downed shields would regenerate) unless the Rebels moved in quickly to take it out. That is an older, smaller version if a Star Destroyer, with very little fighter support.

That being said, I think one would need at least 48 ships to dent an ISD with NO fighter support.

Wraith Squadron took out an Imperial Star Destroyer and it's full complement of 48 TIE fighters, 12 TIE interceptors (181st squadron), and 12 TIE bombers with a Corvette, 10 X Wings, 4 TIE Fighters, and reinforcements of a total of 36 A+Y wings.

Given, they ambushed it and took out it's shield generators before it could raise the shields... And it used strange tactics. And they were crazy for attempting it =P.

I'll admit there was a good bit of video game silliness in my example. The game was running on a 486 so there were clearly limitation on the number of fighters that could be present in the mission area at any given time. Also, the imperials were extremely considerate and waited until the X-Wing escorts had knocked out each group of Tie fighters before launching the next wave. Heaven forbid they should launch 70 fighters all at the same time to protect the ship rather than trickle them into the fight a half dozen at a time.

Wraith Squadron took out an Imperial Star Destroyer and it's full complement of 48 TIE fighters, 12 TIE interceptors (181st squadron), and 12 TIE bombers with a Corvette, 10 X Wings, 4 TIE Fighters, and reinforcements of a total of 36 A+Y wings.

Given, they ambushed it and took out it's shield generators before it could raise the shields... And it used strange tactics. And they were crazy for attempting it =P.

And those weren't really the 181st.

Without Capital Ship support?

Balls of Steel.

Lots of them.

I'd say "realistically" I'd want 3-4 squadrons of fighters in a space-superiority role (i.e., A-wings and X-wings) to interdict the Star Destroyer's own fighter complement, plus another 2-3 squadrons of dedicated bombers.

(A pair of Corvettes or something to flank would be helpful, too.)

I would guess at least 20 Y wings for bombing runs, 35 B wings for support and minimum 20 X wings for tie control....if you want 20 A wings for pestering flankers and rapid response

and none of this without capital ship support

I would almost put this type of battle on par with the Hunt for the Battleship Bismarck

Ram Arvel into the Shield Generators of a SSD, then have that one barrel-roll into a regular SD, and you're good to go.

An ISD in XWMG terms?

1 - ISD: 5000pts(?)

48 - TIE 576+pts (Min for AP)

12 - TIE Interceptors 216+pts (Min for Alpha)

12 - TIE Bombers 192+pts (Min for Scimitar w/ NO ord)

8 - Lambda Shuttles 168+pts

Plus assorted other craft like Skip/Firesprays and Gunboats

Probably would wanna take the equivelant of about 6-7 thousand pts worth of Rebel guts to make it an even fight.

In the new Honor Among Thieves book, Luke, Wedge, and six other X-Wing pilots blow up a Star Destroyer by themselves.

Basically, what I'm saying is the sources are going to range so widely that you might as well pick what feels about right.

I would almost put this type of battle on par with the Hunt for the Battleship Bismarck

I was acctually thinking of the Bismarck as I was writing this. It was pretty much the biggest battleship ever built (maybe the Japanese built a bigger one, but I cant remember...) and it put up quite a fight....

I don't get why everyone around here is so infatuated with the engineering capabilities of the empire.

Size means absolutely nothing.

Do I need to remind everyone that it took 1 xwing with 1 missile to destroy the Death Star?? Twice..

So, all this talk about size and how no single squad of ships is a match for a SD..

People, we are talking about an empire that obviously doesn't build things tough and to last. Yet you all are so certain a SD is near impossible to stop.

ATST? Got blown up by rocks and a log.

ATAT? A single grenade.

Tie Fighters? 1 shot kill.

Storm Troopers? 1 shot kill.

Death Star? 1 xwing missile.. With no targeting computer.

Ladies and gents, the Empires equipment is the equivalent of stuff "made in china".

I would almost put this type of battle on par with the Hunt for the Battleship Bismarck

I was acctually thinking of the Bismarck as I was writing this. It was pretty much the biggest battleship ever built (maybe the Japanese built a bigger one, but I cant remember...) and it put up quite a fight....

Bismarck was the 8th largest from memory, Tirpitz was larger then the 4 American Iowa class and finally the 2 Yamato class, (the third was converted to a carrier so not a battleship)

Back to the matter at hand I would say I would want about 2-300 fighters with at least 2/3rds being bombers with full ordinance compliments if this was with no cap support.

So the Rogue Squadron games (which I love so much) will tell you that a single B-wing and his wingmen can take out a SD. This doesnt seem very realistic to me. Sure, during real life naval warfare, a single very well placed bomb has been enough to sink gigantic ships and that could also apply to SDs, but that doesnt happen very often, and its a whole lot of luck.

Not to mention the number of squadrons of Tie Fighters it could pump out...

Semper Fi and thank you for your service. No, I'm not a fellow Marine, just a former "tread-head".

Anyway...

Consider the historical examples re: attacking heavily armed and armored battleships. While it was struck by several armor piercing bombs, it was really only one hit (to the #2 turret magazine) that sank the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor. On the other hand, it took around 400 aircraft sorties and dozens of bomb and torpedo hits to sink the IJN Musashi. So, you can make any argument you want about how many fighters it should take to destroy an ISD.

Every time this topic comes up, people get really inflamed butts over it. Honestly, it all depends on your source material. Sometimes the ISD is portrayed as this juggernaut of death, other times it's just a handful of fighters wiping them out...

What do YOU think is appropriate? Decide that first, then go with it.

Normal Rebel forces: at least 2 cruisers of some sort and 100 fighters/bombers, probably as much as 50%-60% more than that is appropriate.

Rogue or Grey Squadron or led by Han Solo: 1 capital ship and about 20+ mixed fighters.

The point being that this is Star Wars and half of the magic is the Rebellion beating insurmountable odds even when things look pretty bleak.

Ladies and gents, the Empires equipment is the equivalent of stuff "made in china".

Or, Star Wars is a story between good guys and bad guys where good guys are SUPPOSED to win.

Ladies and gents, the Empires equipment is the equivalent of stuff "made in china".

...

Or, Star Wars is a story between good guys and bad guys where good guys are SUPPOSED to win.

Which gives credence and justification for 1 missile blowing up a space station the size of a moon??

The movies are what drives 95% of the canon. And in the movies, imperial equipment is cheap and blows up the second you look at it wrong. This isn't an opinion here.. Its fact.

So the Rogue Squadron games (which I love so much) will tell you that a single B-wing and his wingmen can take out a SD. This doesnt seem very realistic to me. Sure, during real life naval warfare, a single very well placed bomb has been enough to sink gigantic ships and that could also apply to SDs, but that doesnt happen very often, and its a whole lot of luck.

Not to mention the number of squadrons of Tie Fighters it could pump out...

Semper Fi and thank you for your service. No, I'm not a fellow Marine, just a former "tread-head".

Anyway...

Consider the historical examples re: attacking heavily armed and armored battleships. While it was struck by several armor piercing bombs, it was really only one hit (to the #2 turret magazine) that sank the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor. On the other hand, it took around 400 aircraft sorties and dozens of bomb and torpedo hits to sink the IJN Musashi. So, you can make any argument you want about how many fighters it should take to destroy an ISD.

If I recall, they had some black powder stored in the Arizona, that wasn't supposed to be there. Didn't help the situation any...

Of course now, we have torpedoes. Well, much better torpedoes.

There are several episodes in both Clone Wars and Battlestar Galactica that give an impression of what it takes to bring a capital ship down, with BG not even attempting to use fighters I believe.

Fastest way would be to run a GR75 straight through.