Are you suggesting that a civilization with the sophistication to build Death Stars, SSDs and other technologies we've seen throughout all six films could not make a computer program with those capabilities?

Actually that's exactly it. EU sources point out that the Empire was not a fan of allowing automated systems on their ships, because the one time they did it, it went very, very bad. Look up the Katana Fleet for more info.

So no, they would over never allowed some sort of autopilot to take over something like a SSD.

What if...?

Captain Bakkup sat staring listlessly at the tactical displays. It was bad enough being Officer-In-Charge of the Backup Bridge on a ship that couldn't seriously be threatened by anything in the enemy fleet, but today the Executor wasn't even engaging. Buried deep in the belly of the 19km super dreadnought, Bakkup had to rely on sensor screens to watch the battle. It was an acquired skill, but one he had gotten quite good at. Why wasn't Piett engaging? At least it would be something fun to watch.

. . .

Now they were in the thick of it! Bakkup was engrossed in the tactical display while his helmsman, Lt. Pii-Lut, read off internal messages.
"Damage report, repulsors 1 and 3"

"Damage report, bridge deflector"

"Auxiliary power routed to damagereportMainBridgeNOTRESPONDING!"

The world turned red. Bakkup was used to this. When the Main Bridge went out, the harsh red light kicked in, that meant it was time to take over. He had done this hundreds of times. In a simulator.

"Sir, our orbit is decaying, the Death Star is pulling us in!"

Decaying orbit, Bakkup had done this. "Fire emergency thrusters! Reroute power from weapons systems to engines. Stabilize orbit." In a simulator.

Bakkup stood leaning over his command console, wide-eyed, attempting to take in every piece of information from the tactical displays at once. Their orbit was stabilizing. That was close.

Bakkup looked at the tactical displays again. What could have hit them? Thinking of his carer and strong desire to not be known as "The Man that Lost the Executor", Bakkup decided on the sensible course of action.

"Get me a message to Read Admiral Sekund."

Bakkup turned to the holographic display. "Sir, we've sustained moderate damage but the Main Bridge took a direct hit. We're flying on sensors only, Admiral Piett's status is unknown. I was going to withdraw so we can get damage control and search teams up there."

Sekund's reply was sporadically interrupted in time with impacts on the shields. "The Death Star will finish off the Rebels, you're not critical in this fight. Carry on, Captain. The Hambone and Gravy Train will cover your withdrawal."

Another issue is terrible flawed construction of Executor. Clearly, this is another product of silly Tarkin Doctrine and it is meant to scare people and not for combat.

In combat ship, there is absolutely no reason to place most important part of the ship (command center) anyway close to the surface of the ship (instead of deep inside).

And this is only most basic issue.

Take Chineese carrier program. It is not so easy to build a big ship like Carrier. So they bought russian one to study. Next step is to build their own and study, and next step is to build more.

Forgive me if I sound ignorant, but if there is absolutely no reason to place command centres anywhere close to the surface... then what are those towers I see on modern day navy ships?

What if...?

Captain Bakkup sat staring listlessly at the tactical displays. It was bad enough being Officer-In-Charge of the Backup Bridge on a ship that couldn't seriously be threatened by anything in the enemy fleet, but today the Executor wasn't even engaging. Buried deep in the belly of the 19km super dreadnought, Bakkup had to rely on sensor screens to watch the battle. It was an acquired skill, but one he had gotten quite good at. Why wasn't Piett engaging? At least it would be something fun to watch.

. . .

Now they were in the thick of it! Bakkup was engrossed in the tactical display while his helmsman, Lt. Pii-Lut, read off internal messages.

"Damage report, repulsors 1 and 3"

"Damage report, bridge deflector"

"Auxiliary power routed to damagereportMainBridgeNOTRESPONDING!"

The world turned red. Bakkup was used to this. When the Main Bridge went out, the harsh red light kicked in, that meant it was time to take over. He had done this hundreds of times. In a simulator.

"Sir, our orbit is decaying, the Death Star is pulling us in!"

Decaying orbit, Bakkup had done this. "Fire emergency thrusters! Reroute power from weapons systems to-"

I got to here, then my stopwatch hit the 12 second mark. Bakkup never even got to finish his instructions before the Executor hit the Death Star.

12 seconds is a short time.

What if...?

Captain Bakkup sat staring listlessly at the tactical displays. It was bad enough being Officer-In-Charge of the Backup Bridge on a ship that couldn't seriously be threatened by anything in the enemy fleet, but today the Executor wasn't even engaging. Buried deep in the belly of the 19km super dreadnought, Bakkup had to rely on sensor screens to watch the battle. It was an acquired skill, but one he had gotten quite good at. Why wasn't Piett engaging? At least it would be something fun to watch.

. . .

Now they were in the thick of it! Bakkup was engrossed in the tactical display while his helmsman, Lt. Pii-Lut, read off internal messages.

"Damage report, repulsors 1 and 3"

"Damage report, bridge deflector"

"Auxiliary power routed to damagereportMainBridgeNOTRESPONDING!"

The world turned red. Bakkup was used to this. When the Main Bridge went out, the harsh red light kicked in, that meant it was time to take over. He had done this hundreds of times. In a simulator.

"Sir, our orbit is decaying, the Death Star is pulling us in!"

Decaying orbit, Bakkup had done this. "Fire emergency thrusters! Reroute power from weapons systems to engines. Stabilize orbit." In a simulator.

Bakkup stood leaning over his command console, wide-eyed, attempting to take in every piece of information from the tactical displays at once. Their orbit was stabilizing. That was close.

Bakkup looked at the tactical displays again. What could have hit them? Thinking of his carer and strong desire to not be known as "The Man that Lost the Executor", Bakkup decided on the sensible course of action.

"Get me a message to Read Admiral Sekund."

Bakkup turned to the holographic display. "Sir, we've sustained moderate damage but the Main Bridge took a direct hit. We're flying on sensors only, Admiral Piett's status is unknown. I was going to withdraw so we can get damage control and search teams up there."

Sekund's reply was sporadically interrupted in time with impacts on the shields. "The Death Star will finish off the Rebels, you're not critical in this fight. Carry on, Captain. The Hambone and Gravy Train will cover your withdrawal."

I like this scenario a lot. It seems the most likely to me under the conditions in a real life situation. However, Keroko's 12 second point (much as it pains me lol) may have more substance than I anticipated. I timed it myself and cam out at 14.64, but I included 3 seconds for Lt. Pii-Lut to press buttons.

Im going to go back and time the scene in RoTJ again just to be sure. Also, I want to look at the distences between the DSII and the Executor. It seems at one point it was miles and miles and miles away and then at the next it was ramming DSII.

Just watched the scene. From the time the A wing crashes into the bridge to the time Executor makes contact with DSII is 16.23 seconds. If the actions New Troski suggest did take 14.64, it would be close. However, one other point to consider and this is just a movie blooper.

If you watch the battle closely, the way DSII is seen in the windows of Executor, most of the time you see the entire station. For that to be possible Executor would have had to be thousands of miles from DSII. Yet just a little later, even though the fleets are shown to be moving slowly, Executor is suddenly barely farther away from DSII than it's on length.

Im willing to yield the point that if Executor (and the whole battle for that matter) was 20 miles or less away from DSII at the time, what was shown on screen was completely logical. However, since Executor and every ship except the fighters just moments before were thousands of miles away and suddenly moved by a movie blooper, I content that New Troski's scenario is far more likely and what we should have seen. Even so, Executor would have been swallowed up by the explosion of DSII.

There's a cut in there, so in "movie-magic" terms, I don't think you can measure the time on film and say that it is equal to the actual time. The Star Wars movies do a fair bit of movie magic timing, otherwise I don't think Luke would have had enough time to get away in his Lambda Shuttle.

But yeah, it's fairly moot even in my scenario unless the Executor kicked it into lightspeed within a few seconds.

There's a cut in there, so in "movie-magic" terms, I don't think you can measure the time on film and say that it is equal to the actual time. The Star Wars movies do a fair bit of movie magic timing, otherwise I don't think Luke would have had enough time to get away in his Lambda Shuttle.

But yeah, it's fairly moot even in my scenario unless the Executor kicked it into lightspeed within a few seconds.

Your probably correct. It's part of why I hate "movie time" though. The other thing I just realized: Piett said the fleet is there to keep the Rebels from escaping. The positions of each part of the battle would be oriented this way moving out to the farthest participant: Endor, DSII, Rebel Fleet, Imperial Feet. The Rebels move away from DSII toward the Imperial fleet moving the battle away from DSII after Ackbar's famous "It's a trap!" As Calrissian, in the Falcon turns back to DSII, you can see the closest ship to DSII was an MC-80. No Impeirla ships anywhere near.

Soooo.... Executor should never have been able to crash into DSII without kicking it into high speed and aiming for it. Except for the scene where it crashes, even just second before that scene, Executor was shown hundreds if not thousands of miles away trying to keep the Rebel fleet from escaping.

Yyyyyeah, I got nothing there. That's definitely a movie blunder for the coolness factor.

There's a cut in there, so in "movie-magic" terms, I don't think you can measure the time on film and say that it is equal to the actual time. The Star Wars movies do a fair bit of movie magic timing, otherwise I don't think Luke would have had enough time to get away in his Lambda Shuttle.

But yeah, it's fairly moot even in my scenario unless the Executor kicked it into lightspeed within a few seconds.

Your probably correct. It's part of why I hate "movie time" though. The other thing I just realized: Piett said the fleet is there to keep the Rebels from escaping. The positions of each part of the battle would be oriented this way moving out to the farthest participant: Endor, DSII, Rebel Fleet, Imperial Feet. The Rebels move away from DSII toward the Imperial fleet moving the battle away from DSII after Ackbar's famous "It's a trap!" As Calrissian, in the Falcon turns back to DSII, you can see the closest ship to DSII was an MC-80. No Impeirla ships anywhere near.

Not only that, but a better question is...where were the Interdictors?

I mean, this is the moment - the trap the Emperor carefully laid to wipe out the entire Rebellion in one blow. It's absolutely critical that they are all there and all destroyed, so...where were the Interdictors to prevent them from just running away?

As it was, the entire Rebel fleet realized it was a trap, and WAS about to jump away into lightspeed until Lando convinced them to stay and fight it out. (He'd hardly have to keep arguing throughout the whole scene "We've GOT to give him more time!" if the Rebel fleet didn't have a choice about staying)

Nevermind the battle of Hoth (again, let's just see those Rebel ships try and escape with an Interdictor's gravity well nearby).

IMHO, the Interdictor-type ships never made much sense, based on what we saw on-screen. If they existed, they should have been seen MANY times in the story as told. Rather, they never appeared on-screen at all.

Given their background, that they were invented for the RPGs as a plot device necessary to solve problems that better writing could have addressed...I can't help but half wonder if they aren't going to be swept away in the EU purge Disney has initiated.

According to Legends/EU there were Interdictors waiting in case the rebels jumped out but they were well away from the main fleet with their own escorting warships.The rebels didn't know they were there when they were planning to retreat.

The thing is Interdictors are very rare so it takes a major effort to get enough of them together to block every route from an entire system so the Empire didn't have time to assemble Interdictor fleets at Hoth or Tatooine.

The only space battle in the OT where the Empire had enough prep time for Interdictor use to be feasible was Endor.

As a kid who grew up on Star Wars, I have never seen a military victory for the empire. The closest thing equated to a military victory was the battle of Hoth. ...yet was it the perceived victory?

I am surprised no one has mentioned the Wired articles on Star Wars: http://www.wired.com/2013/02/battle-of-hoth/

What do you all think?

They seized Alliance HQ, forcing their high command to relocate to the Alliance fleet which was something the Alliance had done their best to avoid having to do. They also seriously disrupted Alliance Command and control plus communications for a while. On top of all this they destroyed more then half of the base's evacuation transports and killed, captured or destroyed an unknown but large amount of Alliance personnel and equipment for light causalities. How could this be considered a defeat? It may not have ended the war but it was definitely a massive victory for the Empire on both the tactical and strategic levels IMO.

Edit: 1: Wired forgets that Vader wanted to capture Luke not kill him. Full orbital bombardment would run a good chance of turning Luke into a cloud of red vapor.

2: Also there is no solid proof that the Alliance only had one base.

Opening text of ANH refers to Rebel ships striking from a hidden base. That does not mean that there weren't other Alliance bases.

Tarkin and Vader do ask Leia where the Alliance base is but they have no why of knowing exactly how many bases the rebels have.

The opening text of ESB refers to the Empire driving the Alliance from their hidden base but is referring to the rebels who were based on Yavin not those stationed elsewhere.

3: We have no idea how the fighter compliment of the Death Squadron was deployed during the battle besides the few Imperial fighters we see chasing the Falcon and those fighters are nowhere near the number of fighters carried by one Imperial class Star Destroyer much less six and an Executor.

As a kid who grew up on Star Wars, I have never seen a military victory for the empire. The closest thing equated to a military victory was the battle of Hoth. ...yet was it the perceived victory?

I am surprised no one has mentioned the Wired articles on Star Wars: http://www.wired.com/2013/02/battle-of-hoth/

What do you all think?

The article seems to be ignoring a lot of things mentioned or shown in the movie. It claims for example that an air raid should be organized since aircraft could pass through the shield, yet while planning the evacuation various people explicitly says that they have to momentarily lower the shield for ships to pass.

It claims the Imperial forces don't overwhelm or destroy the few laser-artillery pieces the Rebels have to protect the generator, even though we see exactly that happening throughout the entire battle.

It claims that Vader should have started bombarding the moment the shield was destroyed, except at this point his forces were already in the base. Bombarding at this stage risks friendly fire.

It also harps on the Empire not stopping a lone X-wing with Luke, but fails to explain how the Empire should have identified the X-wing as a high-priority target instead or anything other than a panicky Rebel saving its own skin at best, or a decoy at worst.

I also want to point out, when the SSD is nose diving towards DS II, it looks like it lost some of it's engines.

There are also two scales to contend with, space scale and ship scale. In x wing, we have a kind of undefined space scale, the relative distance which the craft can cover. You can set the space scale to the ship scale, but how many seconds take place in a turn? And we end up hazy again. When you introduce something as massive as a star destroyer into x wing, the space scale becomes more important, how many moves would it take to traverse the length of a star destroyer? If the space scale is too far off, you end up with wacky movement and ships moving too slow or fast fluff wise

In Armada, the large sliding scale allows for that problem to be skirted.