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??

Yes it does. It give all kinds of justification.

In the STORY the Rebels win AGAINST ALL ODDS because they were SUPPOSED to win, not because they out-maneuvered, over-powered, or out-matched the Imperials.

They won... because they were supposed to.

*Note*

I am not hating on the story. It's a great story, and the reason we all love Star Wars.

But without acknowledging the superiority of the Imperial Navy, Star Wars simply becomes

" The Battle between the technologically superior Rebels VS the Imperials who ordered their equipment from the "Oriental Trading Company."

And... quite frankly, that sounds pretty boring.

... in the movies, imperial equipment is cheap and blows up the second you look at it wrong. This isn't fact here.. Its an opinion .

Fixed!

Lemme explain. And we can even use real-life examples!

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.

The AT-ST was designed to be a recon hit and run vehicle. If you call " cheap " because the Empire didn't account for "Swinging-Logs-Of-Death," or "Log-alanch" then I suppose you would also call a Porsche " cheap " because it can't go off-roading.

The AT-AT was designed to crush and demoralize enemy forces. Once again, if you call it "cheap" because the Empire didn't account for cutting holes in the bottom of it and shoving grenades in there, (or even Spiderman "towing cables") I suppose you would also call modern tanks " cheap " because they couldn't function in the same situation.

Stormtroopers and Tie Fighters? Okay... Yeah. Their stuff was designed to be mass produced, and to be cheap. But I will point out that Stormtrooper armor was just as effective as Rebel armor. And only a handful of Rebel ships ever survived one shot.

And finally, the Death Star. It was destroyed with two torpedos... that changed directions, mid-flight, to swim down the fallopian tubes of the Death Star. Literally, the shot that was "one in a million." The shot that is known for it's phenomenal unlikeliness because it should not have succeeded (not because of the "cheap" Imperials).

Saying that the Death Star was cheap because of this shot is like saying, "Armored trucks are cheap because if you break the fuel pump, they won't run."

No! It's more like saying, "Armored Trucks are cheap because if you climbed underneath one, while it was driving, then snaked your hand up through the bottom of the engine, and unbolted the fuel pump, they won't run."

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

...

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.

Saying "Imperial equipment is cheap" is like saying, "Michael Jackson had no talent," or "In-N-Out Burgers are terrible."

There may be chance instances where this statement may apply.

But the Imperials didn't take over the galaxy with cheap ships,

Michael Jackson didn't sell 750 million albums worldwide by being talentless, and

In-N-Out Burgers didn't become delicious by being terrible... okay this last one is all opinion, with no "facts" behind it, but you get my point.

tl;dr:

The Death Star destroyed planets. With a single shot (that didn't curve around and down the rabbit hole, I might add!). Those planets must have been "Made In China" too...

*Note* This entire reply has been fun to write. Everything in it was said in good fun. To prove a point, sure, but without malice.

One captured Lambda shuttle with some thermal detonators should do the trick.

*Note* This entire reply has been fun to write. Everything in it was said in good fun. To prove a point, sure, but without malice.

Valid points, and very Fun to read as well!

One captured Lambda shuttle with some thermal detonators should do the trick.

The Star Wars equivalent of the Trojan Horse.

Gotta get those thermal detonators someplace more critical to an ISD than a hanger deck so it'd probably require a forklift to move those thermal detonators though...

Imperial Officer - "Halt! Where are you driveing that forklift loaded with boxes labeled 'Thermal Detonators?'"

Rebel Scum - "Uh, everything's under control. Situation normal."

Imperial Officer - "What? What 'situation' are you talking about?"

Rebel Scum - "Uh, we had a slight weapons malfunction, but uh... everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here now, thank you. How are you?"

Imperial Officer - "What are you talking about? Weapons Malfunction? I've not recieved any reports about any weapons malfunctions!"

Rebel Scum - " Uh, uh... negative, negative. We had a reactor leak here now. Give us a few minutes to lock it down. Large leak, very dangerous."

Imperial Officer - "There's a reactor leak now!?! Why was I not informed of this? There must be some of our men trapped inside the reactor room behind this blast door and you are bringing these thermal detonators down here hoping you will be able to blast your way through to save them. Thank you for your initative but it is called a blast door for a reason , you will never get through with these. I am going to get on the comms and get some engineering and containment crews down here immeadiatly. Thank you... Uh... Who are you? What's your operating number?"

[Rebel Scum shoots the Officer ]

Rebel Scum - [ muttering ] "Boring conversation anyway. LUKE, WE'RE GONNA HAVE COMPANY!"

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.

Original X-Wing - Destroy the Intrepid:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_the_Circarpous_system

The Intrepid was low on crew and had a damaged hyperdrive, and so was a target of opportunity for the Rebels.

Three fighter squadrons took part - Gold Squadron A-Wings, Red Squadron X-wings and Blue Squadron Y-Wings and X-Wings. Gold was assigned to engage the Star Destroyers remaining fighters, Red was assigned to destroy the shield generators then assist Gold and Blue (one the Intrepid's shields were down) were to engage the Destroyer itself with a proton torpedo bombardment.

The wiki above states (minimum) 2 Red X-Wings, (minimum) 2 Gold A-Wings, plus (minimum) 1 Blue X-Wing and however many Y-Wings were required (I believe there was something like four per wave). Reinforcements arrived as ships were destroyed..

the basic issue is, that Star Wars is more fantasy than scifi and has a good deal of narrative causality thrown in.

Some of the EU stuff tried to bring a bit more scifi into it (aka numbers still count) while other stuff in particular some of the games went even more overboard with "let the rebels win".

Therefore you get a bunch of reference tables, depending on which stuff you refer to.

In a game where the Empire side should have the same chances to win as the rebels, it might be sensible to look at those references which look the most objective and not just the cases where the story demanded the good guys have to win even if there is an ISD on the table.

I for one liked the stories, where getting safely away from an ISD, which dropped in on you, was considered a win and not a failure to destroy that thing, but that works only in a narrative perhaps a scenario, but not in a fair and open death-match.

That's just me, but usually if you put enough sources and authors on one topic they produce enough stuff so that you can derive almost anything of it,

All you have, and it will not be enough.

If I remember correctly if the Star Destroyer didn't have any fighters and I had an X-wing with a full load of 6 Proton torpodoes and about a half of of doing the Woten Weave I could destroy the Star Destroyer by my self.

Other Star Wars material is a little Schitzophenic regaurding the relative power bwtween Large stardestroyer sized ships and fighters. In the original trillogy they give the impression that Fighters are (at least accorsing to standard military doctrine) not very powerful. It was believe that left both Death Stars vulnerable to the rebels attacks. Large turbolasers seem to be the primary military weapon in space combat. I can only assume these weapons are very powerful when used against cruiser sized ships, but they are not really designed to fight fighter. I can only assume this is why the Falcon survived so many times while being shot at by Star Destroyers.

However fighters are one of the things that we love about Star Wars. There a tons of books and games that focus on the fighters. Star Destroyers and cruiser sized ships by comparison have not gotten nearly the attention in the EU. We know they are incredably poweful, but we know a lot more about what they can't do than what they can. For example: a huge fleet of star destroyers cannot penetrate the energy shield protecting the rebel base on Hoth. Though Star Destroyers make Han very nervous, they have great dificulty destroying or capturing the Milenium Falcon (which, lets face it isn't even a ground built military ship).

One last point: According to more than one resourse I have read (granted they are all EU) a Star Destroyer has a standard compliment of 72 TIEs, TIE Intercetors, and TIE Bombers. So even if a Star Destroyer is just a fighter carrier it is pretty dangerouse.

In X-Wing I believe I could destroy one with a single Y-Wing provided I didn't have to deal with those pesky TIE Fighters.

Step 1: DUMBFIRE three Torpedoes into each of the Shield Generators to take them out.

Step 2: Hit it with a bit of Ion Fire to disable the ship.

Step 3: Just sit there and pound away until it's dead. It will take while using lasers and ions.

Notes

Step 1: You dumbfire the torpedoes to avoid the ISD's anti-missile system that would shoot them down if they were targeting that system.

Step 2: It was INSANELY easy to disable a ship with ion cannons once it's shield was gone

This conversation about the durability of the imperial craft and stations is just foolish. The Empires stuff is durable, but Star Wars is a STORY. One in which the heroes pull off one in a millions . Luke dumb fired torpedoes who needed to turn to reach their goal, and it still worked. That alone is the only point I need to make to stop this nonsense, that should not cannot happen except in a story where the victory of the hero is assured.

... in the movies, imperial equipment is cheap and blows up the second you look at it wrong. This isn't fact here.. Its an opinion .

Fixed!

Lemme explain. And we can even use real-life examples!

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.

The AT-ST was designed to be a recon hit and run vehicle. If you call " cheap " because the Empire didn't account for "Swinging-Logs-Of-Death," or "Log-alanch" then I suppose you would also call a Porsche " cheap " because it can't go off-roading.

The AT-AT was designed to crush and demoralize enemy forces. Once again, if you call it "cheap" because the Empire didn't account for cutting holes in the bottom of it and shoving grenades in there, (or even Spiderman "towing cables") I suppose you would also call modern tanks " cheap " because they couldn't function in the same situation.

Stormtroopers and Tie Fighters? Okay... Yeah. Their stuff was designed to be mass produced, and to be cheap. But I will point out that Stormtrooper armor was just as effective as Rebel armor. And only a handful of Rebel ships ever survived one shot.

And finally, the Death Star. It was destroyed with two torpedos... that changed directions, mid-flight, to swim down the fallopian tubes of the Death Star. Literally, the shot that was "one in a million." The shot that is known for it's phenomenal unlikeliness because it should not have succeeded (not because of the "cheap" Imperials).

Saying that the Death Star was cheap because of this shot is like saying, "Armored trucks are cheap because if you break the fuel pump, they won't run."

No! It's more like saying, "Armored Trucks are cheap because if you climbed underneath one, while it was driving, then snaked your hand up through the bottom of the engine, and unbolted the fuel pump, they won't run."

Some Imperial Stuff is cheap. Tie Fighters for example. They are just flat out terrible. They don't have any justification for existing really. However, it suits the thematic sense of the film: The Empire is monolithic and faceless. It relies on huge vessels that seem unassailable, and when it does fighters they are bunch of faceless mooks. This contrasts to the Rebellion, who rely on the plucky individual, usually in their fighters, but when they do capital ships they are more individual, flowing and less harsh. This thematic requirement overrides any rational explanation.

For example: AT-ATs are a terrible design. Walkers inherently have various problems which a normal tank wouldn't have (or, if we are going Star Wars here, a hovertank). They will have a high centre of gravity, legs are harder to protect than tracks (or in the case of a repulsorlift vehicle, an internal repulsorlift generator) and a walker will always end up taller than you really want it to be (it can be seen miles off, so can be engaged miles off). However, the slow, seemingly unstoppable advance of these things, impenetrable to normal fire, suits the themes of the story... and the heroes come up with an outlandish plan to deal with them (anyone designing a walker should have thought of how to deal with entangled legs).

Also, the AT-ST is even worse than it should be (bad as it is, even if it looks quite cool). If it is a light armoured military scout vehicle logs shouldn't cause it to blow up... anything armoured to protect against any kind of fire should be able to take a log on either side without exploding. Denting, maybe, but exploding? And what kind of walker explodes spontaneously when tripped up?

Stormtroopers are another example. The armour is there to make them look scary and faceless, which is why it seems to protect them less than the bare skin of a human being who happens to be a hero (one scene has it being penetrated by a stone tipped arrow of all things).

On how many fighters to take on a Star Destroyer? Depends. I would say give a single squadron of good pilots, fully equipped with torpedoes, against a star destroyer with no fighter cover and I would say that is enough. Put in the fighter cover and it suddenly becomes iffy. What do I base this on? Purely what I think feels right based on the performance in the films and the themes of the stories. Now, I don't think this force would destroy the ship, just render it combat ineffective by destroying its weapons etc. The ship would remain largely intact, and could be repaired to full functionality eventually.

On how many fighters to take on a Star Destroyer? Depends. I would say give a single squadron of good pilots, fully equipped with torpedoes, against a star destroyer with no fighter cover and I would say that is enough. Put in the fighter cover and it suddenly becomes iffy. What do I base this on? Purely what I think feels right based on the performance in the films and the themes of the stories. Now, I don't think this force would destroy the ship, just render it combat ineffective by destroying its weapons etc. The ship would remain largely intact, and could be repaired to full functionality eventually.

Herm... I would actually think the other way around. The fighters do proton volleys to take down the shields and then proton volleys to damage the hull. They'd be more likely to leave all the weapons in place. Even if we talk about a VISD, you're talking about 10 Quad turbo batteries, 40 double turbo batteries, and 80 concussion missile launchers. If we say that the full squadron link fires together to bring down the shields, then 24 of your 72 torpedoes are consumed, leaving you with 48. You could take out all of the laser batteries probably, but they're still going to have an unlimited source of missiles to shoot at you from all angles. And I don't think it's fair to not discuss the TIE fighter compliment. Given in a Victory-I there's only 24 TIEs, but that would be a fair fight for another squadron of X wings, meaning that you should consider that squadron destroyed. There's also the case of if you just take out the shield, how the heck do you keep the SD from jumping to hyperspace? You have to trap them first, either with an Interdictor star destroyer, or somehow lure it into a planets gravity well.

And let's be honest here, the majority of Star Destroyers were Imperial Star Destroyers... Which takes this all to a new level. And then there's the entire thing... You know... If a squadron of X wings could reasonably take out an Imperial Star Destroyer, then they really wouldn't be that scary, would they?

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.

Funny you would say that. I wrote a story where the rebels took a transport, put an astromech at the helm afer they copied his memory, then set it up to hyperspace through a star destroyer. When the rebels got back they took a brand new droid and loaded the pilots memory into it, then painted a star destroyer silhouette on its side.

..

And let's be honest here, the majority of Star Destroyers were Imperial Star Destroyers... Which takes this all to a new level. And then there's the entire thing... You know... If a squadron of X wings could reasonably take out an Imperial Star Destroyer, then they really wouldn't be that scary, would they?

the real question would be, could the Empire be that dumb and financially inept to build those things and crew them, if a squad would do just fine in comparison? Status symbol or not, it's a costly way to deal with an inferiority complex.

I read somewhere (I think it was in one of the cut away books) that an Imperial Class Star Destroyer was designed to be as powerful as 120 Clone War Era Star Destroyers.

This makes sense since the Star Destroyer is the real backbone of the Imperial might. It might have been replaced by the Deathstar if they ever lasted to the end of their warranty life.

An Imperial Class Star Destroyer, was supposed to outclass any other ship in the galaxy, carry a huge number of Fighter Craft as well as an equally massive number of ground troops.

Yes, Star Wars is pretty silly. And it was never designed with any real military considerations beyond what looks cool. But until the Battle of Endor, I would venture to guess that for the most part Star Destroyers just weren't ever destroyed.

If you assume that Yavin Base represented the actual Rebel Base and its destruction would have meant an end to the rebellion then at least at the time of Episode IV I don't think the Rebels had enough fighter craft to destroy an fully loaded and ready Star Destroyer. Or course the Rebel Alliance goes in size over the course of the next three movies.

The AT-ST was designed to be a recon hit and run vehicle. If you call " cheap " because the Empire didn't account for "Swinging-Logs-Of-Death," or "Log-alanch" then I suppose you would also call a Porsche " cheap " because it can't go off-roading.

Mythbusters did a Star Wars special and actually tried this using a armored car. The two logs they used had a truly shocking amount of energy behind them.

If star destroyers could be taken down so easily, they would fall out of favor. I think in the video games they are under powered quite a bit on purpose. I also think it's stupid that the "balls" on top of the bridge are so vulnerable if they are the shield projectors for the ship. It always made more sense that they were com arrays or radar. In ROTJ, they state that they lost bridge deflectors just after one of the balls is destroyed. My theory is because of all of the combat going on, the deflectors were weakened, then an a wing blew up the "ball" then they got rammed. So millions of tons of star ship and thousands of men were destroyed. Unless it was an extreme amount of luck, it would make no sense to pour so much resources and manpower into a ship that size if it was really that fragile. I realize this may contradict Canon in the minds of some. We never see any other ship with an external shield projector, after all. I prefer to think of the destruction of the ball and the loss of the bridge deflectors as two unrelated events that happened at almost the same time. But That's just me.

Even in ROTJ, I think that one IS is the equal of a couple of Mon Cal cruisers. Maybe roughly equal to the home one. I think in a straight up battle, 4 standard ISDs could have taken the whole rebel fleet in ROTJ. I always thought it odd that all those ISDS wouldn't mop up the remaining rebel ships after the death star was destroyed.

I always thought it odd that all those ISDS wouldn't mop up the remaining rebel ships after the death star was destroyed.

That's because when the Emperor died his battle mediation was broken, that really messed up all the Imperial Officers who had up to that point been somewhat biological robots controlled by him.

Those logs they used looked so much more massive than the ones in the film. Also, they had a flat end. The ones in the movie were tapered, which actually would give you more of a higher impact force. The impact would be on a smaller area and would increase the force on the object. Pretty cool test.

Even in ROTJ, I think that one IS is the equal of a couple of Mon Cal cruisers. Maybe roughly equal to the home one. I think in a straight up battle, 4 standard ISDs could have taken the whole rebel fleet in ROTJ. I always thought it odd that all those ISDS wouldn't mop up the remaining rebel ships after the death star was destroyed.

I always find that funny too. There were about +30 star destroyers (Is and IIs) in the battle, they outnumbered the Rebel fleet nearly 4 to 1. They could have easily wiped out the rebel fleet without the death star even having to fire a shot. It was sort of explained in the Zhan trilogy that the Emperor was essentially controlling the Imperial fleet through the force. The Emperor purposely kept the mass of the fleet back so he could blast the crap out of the rebel fleet with his death star. What he didn't count on was the ground party taking out the shield that protected it.

Once that was down it was vulnerable to the rebel fighters and thus destroyed. It was explained that once the Emperor was killed that complete lack of direct leadership caused chaos in the ranks of the Imperial fleet. Also, to couple that the flagship, the SSD Executor, and the Death Star was destroyed, the entire fleet's moral went in the tank. Many commanders just fled from the area and some just surrendered.

I have read zahn's explanation, but that always seemed a little thin. Given 10 star destroyers with poor commanders, they still should have won. And they had 3 times that number. Still, zahn's explanation is better than any reason I can come up with.

Still, zahn's explanation is better than any reason I can come up with.

If we follow Zahn's explanation, then the number of ISD's didn't matter. The people in command of them, firing the guns, ect... were in such a state of shock with the Superior's death due to the battle mediation, loss of the DS II, and the SSD. Superior numbers just didn't matter.

It's not like there's never been a case of superior numbers but broken morale being beaten by a smaller force.

It is a bit thin, but moral and lack thereof can do crazy things to a fighting force. There are numerous real-world accounts of a superior fighting force surrendering to a inferior one due to a complete loss of moral.

I always assumed that Luke's proton torpedoes were caught by some kind of gravity/energy shield on the exhaust port, which is why they changed direction and traveled down. I'm gonna put on my fake scientist lab coat and suggest that the exhaust port is actually designed to push things OUT with a repulsive electromagnetic thing, and the proton torpedoes have a kind of antimatter effect that is actually attracted to that same energy field, which would explain why the proton torpedoes were drawn IN instead. Or something. It looked good and was dramatically appropriate for the movie and that's the actual truth.

"Realistically" I think you'd need a couple hundred Rebel starfighters just to have any chance of success of disabling an ISD. You'd need enough fighters to deal with the Imperial fighters while systematically bombing critical targets. To destroy an ISD outright would certainly require some special knowledge (unconventional weapons or tactics), and might not be possible without infiltrating the ship.

I think even a disabled ISD could take whatever Rebel starfighters could dish out. I assume it'd take hundreds of fully-loaded Ys and Bs to dig a crater to the ISD's generator or whatever it would take to blow the whole thing up, assuming the ISD had no shields or defensive craft.

But that's not very exciting, so I'd say one starfighter is all you need, if it makes for a good story. Maybe just one Bothan martyr, or a droid on a suicide mission. Whatever.

If you were a Captain of an ISD at Endor, you'd have no incentive to bother destroying the rebels. Once the Emperor was killed, you knew the Empire would collapse so you'd bugger out back to base and see if you could negotiate a way out of the mess you suddenly found yourself in. In other words, you'd be in a much better position to bargain with the New Republic if you didn't massacre what was left of the rebels. Heck, you might end up with a commission in the New Republic navy. As soon as one ISD fled, the others would follow.