I just want to echo what KRKappel said about the resources required to invade a system like Mon Cal (I imagine the same can be echoed for every other planet in one degree or another).

Physical resources are one thing, intelligence is another. But beyond fleets there would need to be build up of stores, the logistics of the actual assault. All of this would be a drain on the resources of the empire in some way, be it from established front line units or reserve forces. There is examples of times when the cost/benefit analysis to deal with a planet or area of space ended in no action by the empire, or at the least very limited action.

The biggest example I can think of is Hutt Space as an area left alone. A contrary example of a planet that required a massive amount of forces to secure and that draining anything from its units to project power elsewhere would of been a disastrous choice is Corellia. That planet alone had over 20 star destroyers around it.

Basically, asymmetrical warfare on a galactic scale is a complicated beast and even the empire would have to pick its battles.

There were very few "liberated" or rebel worlds. Most planets in the core and inner and outer colony regions were loyal to the Empire and benefitted from being loyal. You had cells committing terrorist type actions on them but for the most part these worlds were content and happy under Imperial rule. In the fringe areas however you see less contentment as people squeak by and cells and pro-rebel sentiment is a bit more open. The fringe area is also frikkin huge and no amount of Imperial military could hope to control and patrol all of it. That said, the rebel alliance was still mostly composed of terrorist cells carrying out attacks on the Empire when it could get away with it without bringing down massive retribution on the civilian populace. The rebel fleet never had the ability to even stand up to a determined assault by the Imperials with its ad hoc "warships" in a straight up fight and only after the Emperor bit it and his force boosting ended did the Rebels take advantage of the confusion to strike back. To rephrase what the guy above me said, the Imperial fleet was massive, but space is massive on an exponential scale.

Never understood why they built the second DS in the fringe instead at a "safe" work yard in the Core worlds. I doubt the emperor had that plan all along, especially since it had to have been started long before the first DS was destroyed.

Not necessarily. With the new tools and methods they developed when building the first DS they could likely boost productivity.

And the DS2 was just the reactor core with the superlaser and an absolute minimum of housing. About half or 2/3 are still missing, not to mention all the weapons, equipment and personell. DS 1 was fully stocked, DS 2 relied for everything except the superlaser on outside help.

There were very few "liberated" or rebel worlds. Most planets in the core and inner and outer colony regions were loyal to the Empire and benefitted from being loyal. You had cells committing terrorist type actions on them but for the most part these worlds were content and happy under Imperial rule. In the fringe areas however you see less contentment as people squeak by and cells and pro-rebel sentiment is a bit more open. The fringe area is also frikkin huge and no amount of Imperial military could hope to control and patrol all of it. That said, the rebel alliance was still mostly composed of terrorist cells carrying out attacks on the Empire when it could get away with it without bringing down massive retribution on the civilian populace. The rebel fleet never had the ability to even stand up to a determined assault by the Imperials with its ad hoc "warships" in a straight up fight and only after the Emperor bit it and his force boosting ended did the Rebels take advantage of the confusion to strike back. To rephrase what the guy above me said, the Imperial fleet was massive, but space is massive on an exponential scale.

Never understood why they built the second DS in the fringe instead at a "safe" work yard in the Core worlds. I doubt the emperor had that plan all along, especially since it had to have been started long before the first DS was destroyed.

You are contradicting yourself. Terrorists wouldn't care if the civilian population got caught in the crossfire. Unless you subscribe to a definition of terrorism where the only difference between a terrorist and a soldier is that the latter is part of a force assembled by a government and the former isn't the term terrorist doesn't apply to the Rebel Alliance any more then it does to members of any military force. Guerrilla warfare groups often do become terrorists but that does not mean all groups which use guerrilla tactics are terrorists. If anything the Empire is based off the tactics of state-sponsored terrorism. The whole point of the Death Stars was to terrorize worlds into submission.

And we don't know exactly how strong the Alliance is in the new canon but one excerpt from an upcoming canon novel refers to an Alliance offensive in the aftermath of Yavin with thousands of ships and hundreds of battle groups which means it is much larger then I thought it was based on either the old EU or previous works from the current canon including the OT.

As for why they put it on the fringe instead of in the core it was supposed to look like the Empire was trying to keep its construction hidden and keeping a project that big hidden would be difficult under any circumstances but it would still be easier to hide in the rim then it would be in the core.

The whole point of the Death Stars was to terrorize worlds into submission.

Consider that Death Star = carrier strike group and worlds = nations, and we have something of a real world equivalent.

A lot of it might have to do with Palpatine's apparent addiction to complex, knock-out-blow plans.

Look at how the Republic and the Order fell. Whether or not you count the centuries of Rule-of-Two Sith chipping away at the Republic's heart, Palps himself spent literally decades building what Matt Stover called the perfect Jedi trap. Years and years to set up the Clone Wars, a thousand blaster bolts dodged along the way, and then in one day the Republic is a memory and the Jedi are mostly corpses.

Endor? A second Death Star built, the plans leaked, Palps using himself as bait, a huge fleet put into motion, all with the goal of ending the Rebellion with a single strike.

The Empire missed their chance to gut the Rebellion at Yavin IV. Now, the Empire could probably conquer Dac and realistically be no worse for the wear. While it might be costly, the Rebels probably don't have enough resources to deal too devastating a blow while the Empire is concentrated there. But Mon Mothma and the other members of Alliance High Command aren't dumb enough to sit on such a massive target, so even if Palpatine guts the Mon Cals like the fish they are the rebel leaders will simply skulk away to start over, and it'll be another two decades lost dealing with them. But if Dac is left alone, and the Rebel scum allowed to build a decent (but not too large, we need to keep them whittled down to manageable levels) fleet, perhaps they'll be gutsy enough to make a mistake. Say, for example, attacking a fully armed and operational battle station that still has its shields up?

The Death Star was basically a carrier group and SSBN all rolled into one in a setting where no one else has any city busters and the makers of it have proven willing to nuke their own people if those people don't go along with the central government's wishes.

They have to be elaborating. The rebel fleet that attacked at Endor was the majority of the entire Rebel fleet and was the biggest action to date. They didn't have huge numbers of ships, especially big ships nor did they have the logistical ability to maintain a massive fleet. That's why it was mostly made up of ancient corvettes and frigates with a few converted Mon Cal cruisers to stiffen the line. It takes a large robust infrastructure to maintain a fleet and back planet ad hoc shipyards can only do so much so fast, especially since all funding and resources have to be under the table to avoid notice.

Xwings and Ywings provide the mainstay of the fighter force just because they were so easily repaired and bought/puchased. B wings were brand new and along with Awings were very expensive to maintain thus there weren't very many. The Rebels just didn't have the resource and labor pool the Empire had. Hopefully they wont change post immediate post-Endor stuff too much(even if they did disregard the best trilogy written) and the civil war will continue for several years until the Rebels make their way to Coruscant.

The story has already been changed so that the Rebel Fleet included ships formerly aligned with the Separatists, as well as SoroSuub-designed Sullustan cruisers and Bothan warships. Presumably, any other species with capital ships that is introduced as Alliance-friendly will be retroactively included at Endor.

Doesn't make a lot of sense. I can understand the old Separatist leftovers that weren't scrapped finding their way into the Alliance. The Mon Cal cruisers make sense in that they were designed as passenger ships first and then made into warships. The Gallowfree freighters were rumored to have been purposely allowed to fall into their hands as they were such horrible ships. Everyone including the Empire used Corellian Corvettes and Nebulon B frigates as they were built in extensive numbers and were everywhere, kind of like today's 737 aircraft. But the Empire would never have allowed major space faring races just to build ships to fall into the hands of the Rebels. I doubt after the first couple Mon Cal ships showed up with guns that the Empire allowed the shipyards to operate without troops being stationed there. As for the other starship building races, they would have had major garrisons present or destroyed the yards completely if more than a couple ships switched sides. They may not have had they numbers to keep large forces at every planet, but they could stationed squads and patrol ships make regular visits. The first time a Bothan ship showed up to fight an Imperial fleet would be the last day those yards were in operation.

They have to be elaborating. The rebel fleet that attacked at Endor was the majority of the entire Rebel fleet and was the biggest action to date. They didn't have huge numbers of ships, especially big ships nor did they have the logistical ability to maintain a massive fleet. That's why it was mostly made up of ancient corvettes and frigates with a few converted Mon Cal cruisers to stiffen the line. It takes a large robust infrastructure to maintain a fleet and back planet ad hoc shipyards can only do so much so fast, especially since all funding and resources have to be under the table to avoid notice.

Xwings and Ywings provide the mainstay of the fighter force just because they were so easily repaired and bought/puchased. B wings were brand new and along with Awings were very expensive to maintain thus there weren't very many. The Rebels just didn't have the resource and labor pool the Empire had. Hopefully they wont change post immediate post-Endor stuff too much(even if they did disregard the best trilogy written) and the civil war will continue for several years until the Rebels make their way to Coruscant.

The story has already been changed so that the Rebel Fleet included ships formerly aligned with the Separatists, as well as SoroSuub-designed Sullustan cruisers and Bothan warships. Presumably, any other species with capital ships that is introduced as Alliance-friendly will be retroactively included at Endor.

The thing is while the entire rebel fleet was at Endor we never saw every rebel ship type there. the excerpt from the upcoming canon Battlefront novel in the back of the US Tarkin paperback release refers to a post-Yavin campaign where the rebels deployed thousands of starships. Even if you count fighters and shuttles as starships and include the full fighter and shuttle compliment of all the ships we saw on screen in addition to the fighters we saw onscreen at Endor you get up to maybe five to six hundred rebel ships so there were clearly far more rebel, and almost certainly far more Imperial ships off screen. .

Edit: You assume the Empire could control ship building center in known space besides Mon Cal Tropheus. Just because some Bothan and Sulstan ships show up in rebel hands doesn't mean the Empire can afford to launch an attack to destroy the yards any more then they could afford to destroy the Kuat or Corellian yards when ships produced there show up in rebel hands. Also the new canon has already confirmed that there are outlaw yards not controlled by the Empire while the Sullastan cruisers the rebels used in Legends were classes of converted cruise liners much as the MC80s were.

I've been thinking a bit about this, and i have an idea: We know some things for fact - The mon calamari have produced ships, and ship components. We know that the rebels, as proven by the show 'Rebels' operate in cells. I believe, that the Mon Calamari have their own cell, the human rebels we see are mainly from Alderaan and a few other core worlds (mostly), the Sullustan have their own cell, and so on. We dont see these non-human cells till Return of the Jedi as they are all acting independantly of each other untill the need to coalesce, and have the fleet massing near sullust to strike at the emperor.

For the first two movies we follow the Alderaan cell.

One of the operations of the Mon Calamari cell was to keep producing ships for legitimate buyers, while at the same time producing some war ships for their own rebel cells in secret.

Sullust was busy doing their own operations, perhaps if the Controlling government/corporation still exists in canon, Sorosuub, some members made certain shipments of mundane gear, maybe some weapons, go missing. Heck, most retail stores take into account a certain percentage of product loss. If sorosuub funnelled clothes and food to the rebel cells it would be their contribution to the overall rebellion, as well as explaining why the rebels all had matching uniforms. ;P

Not every rebel cell has to be a military operation. Some, like the Mon Calamari, might be better at hiding their involvement.

Which, woth the new movies having the resistance, perhaps after Palpatine's death, many of the rebel cells figured the job was done, they can reform the republic or the empire as ruled by the new senate, or whatever, rather than continue to fight. Some, the resistance, hold onto the grudge and keep trying to destroy what is left of the Empire.

Whatever we have seen on Hoth, no doubt we would have seen 999 times stronger on Dac.

So, after passing those mined hyperspace lines and loosing some ISD's, they would face planetary shield strong enough to hold bombardment and hosts of Ion cannons and other planetary scale weapons to take many ISD's out of the sky.

So, they passed that defence and landed... wait, there is no way to land. It seems they had to pull a lot of work to design military equipment to fight in very unnatural enviroment. Submarines instead of standard AT's special suits and training for troopers. Costs are amassing and we have to make enough of this to consider loosing a lot during approach and landing.

We are talking about massive costs of preparing the proper force and massive loses during space assault.

We have to remember the resources are not unlimited and Imperial Navy have a problems trying to protect controlled systems against piracy and rebels. Deats Star Project is a massive burden for "Defence spending".

And then, it's not enough to make a landing.

It's remote system, weeks of travel from core with hyperspace lines that would be constantly mined by rebels.

Unfriendly population in unfriendly enviroment means very hard guerilla warfare.

And if they would be forced to withdraw from planet, it would be another major breach in "Invincible Empire" propaganda

Vietnam or Afghanistan comes to my mind.

It seems much wiser to wait for a Death Star to be completed.

^^this

All this ignores that a single ISD can turn a planet into slag, this ignores that in Admiral Ackbar's own estimate, the rebel fleet was sorely outgunned, it ignores that mines can easily be defused or detonated by droids, it ignores Vader wanted some of the rebels on Hoth alive for questioning and was playing its own game.

We are not talking about massive losses. We're talking about a couple hundred droids in hyperspace pods to clear the minefield, and then a curbstomp. Does the empire lose a few star destroyers? Maybe. Does it care? Hell no. If that deterred them, they wouldn't be chasing the rebels after Hoth, where they do lose an SD. There is no mention of the navy having problems with piracy in controlled systems in the movies, either. On the contrary, the Millennium Falcon, one of the fastest ships around, had to dump cargo in the face of an imperial patrol.

People are seriously underestimating the empire, and overestimating the capabilities of the rebellion.

The galaxy is freaking huge. In Episode II, Count Dooku tells the separatist leaders that "ten thousand more systems" are on the brink of joining them. Sure, we only ever see a handful, but behind that we have a staggering amount of ground to cover for the Empire.

All this ignores that a single ISD can turn a planet into slag, this ignores that in Admiral Ackbar's own estimate, the rebel fleet was sorely outgunned, it ignores that mines can easily be defused or detonated by droids, it ignores Vader wanted some of the rebels on Hoth alive for questioning and was playing its own game.

We are not talking about massive losses. We're talking about a couple hundred droids in hyperspace pods to clear the minefield, and then a curbstomp. Does the empire lose a few star destroyers? Maybe. Does it care? Hell no. If that deterred them, they wouldn't be chasing the rebels after Hoth, where they do lose an SD. There is no mention of the navy having problems with piracy in controlled systems in the movies, either. On the contrary, the Millennium Falcon, one of the fastest ships around, had to dump cargo in the face of an imperial patrol.

People are seriously underestimating the empire, and overestimating the capabilities of the rebellion.

Or perhaps you are underestimating the Mon Calamari defenses? Nothing stated that the Empire couldn't punch through the Mon Calamari defenses but doing so quickly and without massive losses, and thus massive damage to the Empire's image of invincibility, would involve either diverting Vader from chasing Luke or stripping ships from other vital missions which was an exchange Imperial High Command was not willing to make. And while the Empire did have a massive edge in numbers it also had vastly more systems it was obligated to defend.

How does one damage the image of someone who controls all venues of communication in and out of a battleground and has a track record of, when victorious, not leaving survivours behind unless it suits his plans and machinations? Never mind that, if we take old fluff, the GE had operatives in Mon Calamri cities at cell strength and above as early as 1 ABY, with orders to seize control of vital assets come an invasion (the Rebel Alliance are not the only ones waging a covert war here).

You said it yourself, however. The Empire seems to be prioritising the search for Luke. Wether this is due to a power struggle between Vader and the Emperor (which would explain more than a supposed and artificial ineptitude of the Imperial navy) or on Palpatine's own list of top priorities is so far unknown, but politics getting in the way of a fairly one-sided military engagement seems far more likely to me than an imperial admiral unable to bomb a single planet into the stone age.

How would the Empire explain any ships lost in the engagement without looking bad? If they claim they were lost to accident or malfunction the Empire looks incompetent. If they tell the truth it is proof the Empire isn't invincible. And like I said while the Imperial fleet is huge it can't just throw everything it has onto the offensive. It has to leave forces to defend its territory or suffer a political backlash from regions that feel they were left under-defended. And as big as the Imperial fleet was it couldn't be everywhere. There was something like one Star Destroyer to every forty system in the Empire t the Imperial Starfleet's peak in the EU.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Piett,

it is with utmost regret that we must inform you of your son's death at the hands of conniving terrorists during his shore leave on Mon Calamari. You have the emperor's own deep, personal condolences for your loss and we feel with you. If you have any questions or require counseling, our fleet office is more than happy to accomodate you. Undoubtedly you have seen the news report on this shocking and gruesome act of murder already, but as his commanding officer, I feel it my personal responsibility to depict the events as they unfolded before my very eyes:

At 0800 hours, the your son's ship, the Vindicator, docked with a Mon Calamari space station to allow its crew some well-deserved shore leave after a series of fleet manuevers. At 0930, our investigation later revealed that members of the fanatical Rebel Alliance blackmailed innocent Mon Calamari maintenence workers into sabotaging the Vindicator's shield generators with explosives they nefariously strapped to their bodies and detonated. Thus helpless, the Vindicator could not protect itself or your son from a second, more powerful detonation, when these self-styled 'Rebels' detonated the space station's reactor core, slaughtering not only countless innocent civilians and rendering the planet below uninhabitable, but also murdering the crew of the Vindicator, including your beloved son.

We valued his service to the Empire greatly and have included a generous pension. We know this will in no way ease your loss, but it is the least we can do.

Once again, our deepest condolences,

Admiral Insert Name Here

Humans can't breath underwater without specialized equipment. Since Mon Cal had a human population of roughly 0, I can't see any reason why the Empire would have bothered with it.

I don't follow the EU as much as... well anyone on this forum apparently, but from what I understand the Quarren and Mon Cal both lived beneath the surface of the water. I had drawn the conclusion that the shipyards were also housed underwater on the planet, rather than in space.

Having manufacturing underwater while under Imperial control would have meant limited oversight, and once in open rebellion I would imagine that Mon Calamari was protected under 100s of feet of water, in essence shielding everything. Basically the Empire could create a lot of steam on the surface, but not much else.

The fact that the Geology of Mon Calamari allowed the population a great deal of secrecy, protection, and prevented any possibility of the Empire holding the populace under control (talk about a logistical nightmare), Mon Cal was truly unique and is probably the only reason it was able to survive in open rebellion of the Empire.

I would guess that was the next stop for Death Star version 2.0 after the Rebel fleet was destroyed at Endor.

No the shipyards were orbital yards like every other large capital ship producing yard in Star Wars. How the Mon Calamari got away with building the original MC80s was simple. They were cruise liners which had been designed from the ground up to be converted swiftly into warships when the revolution came. Plus they were designed to require Mon Cal bridge crews to get the most out of them which was a feature that wasn't changed until the MC90 series and one of the reasons I have always hoped for the Sorosub Dauntless and Liberator classes to appear in the RPG and canon someday.

However they and other Mon Calamari designs were built to be able to travel underwater and I believe that many smaller ships built for the revolt were based underwater.

And Dac was on the Death Star II's target list along with Mon Mothma's homeworld of Chandrila in Legends.

Do remember they did have an entire legion of storm troopers specialized in underwater warfare including vehicles. Waterworlds are common enough in the bigger scheme of things to justify it.

As for invading the system, there is not a system in the galaxy that could have stood up to a determined Imperial attack. In the case of the Mon Cal, the Quarren themselves might have sided with the Imps just to get rid of their adversaries, the Mon Calimarians. Wiping out the space docks would have been a simple matter and the invasion itself would maybe have cost a couple Star Destroyers.

Do remember they did have an entire legion of storm troopers specialized in underwater warfare including vehicles. Waterworlds are common enough in the bigger scheme of things to justify it. As for invading the system, there is not a system in the galaxy that could have stood up to a determined Imperial attack. In the case of the Mon Cal, the Quarren themselves might have sided with the Imps just to get rid of their adversaries, the Mon Calimarians. Wiping out the space docks would have been a simple matter and the invasion itself would maybe have cost a couple Star Destroyers.

A legion is just a few thousand troops. Not much against millions, or potentially even billions of resistance fighters. The Mon Cala did have some cities on the surface, though. As for manufacturing underwater, I can't imagine how much more expensive that would make construction costs, although as a rebel strategy for hiding things, that is an interesting idea...

Do remember they did have an entire legion of storm troopers specialized in underwater warfare including vehicles. Waterworlds are common enough in the bigger scheme of things to justify it. As for invading the system, there is not a system in the galaxy that could have stood up to a determined Imperial attack. In the case of the Mon Cal, the Quarren themselves might have sided with the Imps just to get rid of their adversaries, the Mon Calimarians. Wiping out the space docks would have been a simple matter and the invasion itself would maybe have cost a couple Star Destroyers.

I suppose you have an exact listing of Mon Calamari's defenses? Because without knowing the strength of the Mon Calamari defense forces we can't make an educated guess what it would take to overwhelm those defenses or what kind of causalities the attacking force would take.

And while the Empire definitely could overwhelm the Mon Calamari defenses it would need to divert enough ships to do so that Imperial High Command didn't consider worth the effort and resources that would need to be expended. Death Squadron could do it but Vader had no interest in doing so and Palpatine didn't care enough t step in and order Vader to do the job.