No battle of Endor game is complete without the Executor, in some form, on the scene.

I wonder if I'm gonna have enough ships after Wave 2 to run my own Battle of Endor event for conventions :T I have an idea, but I need to be able to support other players with the ships!

All those GR-75s in these Battle of Endor shots.... would be great if FFG could shoe horn them into Armada effectively.

That was exactly my thought as well - I think support ships (done right) make a lot of sense in Armada.

There is a good list of ships on the wiki page.

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

Looks like at least 9 MC80s although of varying types.

10 Neb B's

7 Corvettes.

1 SSD

2 Battlecruisers.

33 ISD's.

3 TSD's

only 1 Victor.

On the list I see it has two Victorys: Dominator and Protector.

The scale creep some people have with Star Wars is absolutely crazy. Armada could potentially in the 5000-point game recreate the on-screen endor. (I'm assuming that the SSD is about a thousand points alone, or about 10 ISDs. Actually, maybe 6000 with fighters included.)

You've got a few ships in the movies. Death squadron was shown as an SSD and 5 ISDs and was supposed to be the most powerful concentration of firepower yet assembled. We've got Han's quote: "The entire star fleet couldn't destroy the whole planet. It'd take a thousand ships with more fire power than I've— there's another ship coming in!" and the conventional defenses on the DS1 being greater than half the star fleet. Endor, which was the biggest battle to have happened with the rebels, is shown with I believe 30ish ISDs (I count 29, might have missed some) and an SSD, As well as at least 11 MC80s. (I count at least 8 in the picture above + 3 destroyed, or in a particular scene) as well as at least 4 corvettes, 3 Neb-Bs and a metric ton of transports. (Obviously the Rebels went fighter heavy! Huh, and no AFs. )

Then in the early EU (with a lot of input from GL, with less power creep) you've got the Katana fleet poised to tip the balance, which was 200 older smaller less powerful ships. Each was less powerful than a VSD, and maybe 3:1 vs ISDs, though I'd say 4 or 5:1 is more accurate, so basically 40-66 ISDs able to mean defeat for either side. If the scale creep that a lot of things have, there's no way the Katana fleet would have meant anything. Even the book series starting the superweapons BS with Kessel the first were conventional attacks with 4 ISDs, and were able to strike at defended places in the New Republic. You've got the case of a VSD, ISD x2 and SSD taking over a planet.

The tens or hundreds of thousands of ISDs as described, seems absolutely crazy when you actually consider it by anything but the highest levels of power creep, and in the context of Han's quote. If you can't shake lose 1% of your fleet while in relative peace (remember the rebels had won a single battle per the opening crawl.) then you have problems.

Even that shown in RotS is perhaps hundreds (I haven't found a count, and I'm too lazy to watch that whole battle to count them.) at most. So the movies weren't immune to power creep either.

With the level of power creep by now, every single Armada battle ever played could be cannon (aside from named individuals/ships), and we still wouldn't really have an effect on the universe!

Then in the early EU (with a lot of input from GL, with less power creep) you've got the Katana fleet poised to tip the balance, which was 200 older smaller less powerful ships. Each was less powerful than a VSD, and maybe 3:1 vs ISDs, though I'd say 4 or 5:1 is more accurate, so basically 40-66 ISDs able to mean defeat for either side. If the scale creep that a lot of things have, there's no way the Katana fleet would have meant anything. Even the book series starting the superweapons BS with Kessel the first were conventional attacks with 4 ISDs, and were able to strike at defended places in the New Republic. You've got the case of a VSD, ISD x2 and SSD taking over a planet.

Keep the logistics in mind. 200 ships, even smaller ships, expecialy with instant-crew, is nopthing to sneeze at. That's 200 additional raids they can pull off. Or 200 planets thay can garrison, pulling the VSD and ISD off to other tasks.

Friend of mine was commenting that while the ISD is a all-in-one starship that can handle any job no matter how large, it also means that you have to tie up all those resources for any job, no matter how small.

The problem is scale. As the setting scaled up and grew larger the fleets had to grow larger to make any sense. In a setting with thousands of inhabitable worlds the fleets we see on screen in Return of the Jedi are so small that they are unbelieveable.

What makes sense is that that's literally every ship the Rebels could scrape together, vs a small Imperial squadron. Vader's personal unit.

After the Emperor dissolves the senate in EpIV, Tarkin states that 'Fear will keep them in line. Fear of this [soon to be vaporized by teenagers] battlestation'.

Presumably after the Death Star's gone, systems start falling out of line. The Empire doesn't have enough garrisons and ships even to keep every system under it's thumb, vs powerful defenses (thus, the need for a Death Star to begin with). This allows planets to obviously and openly throw in for the Rebels (Mon Calamari).

I'd expect both the Rebels and Imps had similar ship forces at Endor, with an advantage to the Imperials particularly because of Executor (ignoring the Death Star).

The GR-75s are interesting in the battle. They don't have visible cannons, what role do they serve? ECM? Fireships?

Also, check out this video at 7 seconds or 8 seconds in... lots of unknown ships made of random parts in the background! One looks like a Dreadnaught sorta, and another looks like a longer MC30.

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Fun Fact: In Return of the Jedi, fire between capital ships is shown only once on screen: A Nebulon-B and an ISD-II exchanging BROADSIDES at point blank range. We know that that would end up like in Armada...

I've looked at the battle of endor and come up with the following numbers for capital ships using only the film for reference (I know the EU goes into more detail):

Imperials

1x Executor SSD

35x Star Destroyers

Rebels

survived in the escape form death star scene:

6x MC80a (wingless type)

8x MC80 (Home One type)

4x Nebulon B frigates (another point earlier in the film shows 7 or 8 frigatesbut i dont have a screenshot)

3x CR 90 Corvettes

14x GR75 transports

Shown earlier in the film, but i dont have a screenshots for

2x MC80a (winged types, one destroyed by death star and one seen later on)

1x brahatok gunship (the y-headed corvette seen breifly)

7-8x Nebulon B frigates

1x Home One type is also destroyed by the death star

I'm completely fine with the 'on screen' representation being more or less right: you know, the rebels with a few dozen capital ships, two or three score assorted smaller vessels, and 4 fighter groups of rebel fighters (likely with some reserves. Why launch all your fighters at once and create a massive-Midway scale lull that an opponent can take advantage of? you know, unless it was meant to be pre-emptive and then sure, why not, fling caution to the wind!).

The Imperials can thus have their 'massive' fleet of 40 capital ships presenting a real threat, and the whole thing feels about right for something like the battle of Jutland or other sort of relatively equatable engagement that we know of (Tsushima might actually be a closeish approximation). You know, just in space. With lasers.

The whole 'thousands of systems, and multi hundred quadrillion trillion gigawattillion citizillion' EU galaxy described has always felt sort of like a degradation of the feats achieved by skewing the scale to 'one up' the other sci-fi franchises out there. So many numbers feels somehow less relevant by being hard to grasp as anything but a statistic.

Anyway, I suppose it depends on how one wishes to view the Star Wars universe, but I rather agree with the general consensus here.

It's an equally fair statement that in the EU, most of the civilizations (many of which we see AFTER Imperial rule) are agrarian backwaters and non-human settlements living in third-world conditions. Further, much of the eastern rim of the Empire is actually Hutt space without much going to the Imperial war effort.

China has three times the population of the USA and double or more the number of military personell, but they are not capable of massing a fleet capable of taking on an American supercarrier battlegroup despite the size advantage. Mere population doesn't determine military might or military industrial output, that all has to be made to fight modern military threats by modern industrial facilities as opposed to locals building vehicles capable of combat but poorly equipped to deal with real military threats.

As it is, I suspect that in the Endor fight they already had dozens of Star Destroyers made for previous shots, but only a handful of large Rebel ships (the largest seen prior to Return of the Jedi was a Nebulon-B cruiser). In exchange, the shots we have of Rebel ships and fighters are all at much closer range than the big wide shot of the Star Destroyers rounding the Death Star 2, making them feel much larger and closely packed to give the illusion of a crowd.

When Lucas finally released Revenge of the Sith, he made a point fo rectifying this and opened the film with a fight involving hudreds of assorted fighters and capital ships on each side.

True. Though I think there is a good point to it being mostly predicated on each individual fan's interpretation of the Star Wars universe. That sounds wishy-washy, but it's really about a sort of pick-and-choose method for matching what elements we identify with.

Alright, this feels slightly off-topic so I'll condense it:

Composing a fleet close to what's on screen, or what's listed in the EU are both valid approaches that will likely yield different results. You'll likely have a slightly easier time of constructing an on-screen 'list' though, rather than an EU one. Either way, you'll probably get a few complaints for one reason or another no matter what method you choose

the imperial fleet would have to remain at speed 0 all fight....... stupid stupid emperor

Curses! A full battle of endor fleet seems do-able... that means I'll be sorely tempted to collect to that number...

1st world problems. At least its still cheaper than a space marine chapter.

Spoilers!-ish

BTW the Marvel (Disney) series Shattered Empire starts at the battle of Endor and goes to Ep 7. They say the rebels were indeed vastly outnumbered, but becasue of the sinking of the SSD and the Emperor and Vader dying on the death star (so they think), the Imperial fleet are suffering from massive chain of command issues and retreat to mass for a counterattack.

And if you've seen the trailer there is no new republic, these comics explain a bit of why. That's all I'll say to keep it as spoiler free as I can while making my point.

Finally I'll say shattered empire should be required reading for any star wars super fan.

My only question is why were GR75's there in the first place? I mean they aren't heavy armed, they don't have hanger bays to launch fighters. Were they cannon fodder or ???

My only question is why were GR75's there in the first place? I mean they aren't heavy armed, they don't have hanger bays to launch fighters. Were they cannon fodder or ???

Why would they bring a medical frigate? This is pre-(neb b's are a combat ship) after all.

No one to watch their stuff while they're gone?

After Alliance fleet hypers back to sullust...

ACKBAR: where's my laptop?

ACKBAR: ...

My only question is why were GR75's there in the first place? I mean they aren't heavy armed, they don't have hanger bays to launch fighters. Were they cannon fodder or ???

Armada logic: Activations and ramming!

They were armed, just with very little firepower. (In the EU, corvettes weren't very well armed either, though heavier than the transports!)

My only question is why were GR75's there in the first place? I mean they aren't heavy armed, they don't have hanger bays to launch fighters. Were they cannon fodder or ???

Why would they bring a medical frigate? This is pre-(neb b's are a combat ship) after all.

Because a Neb-B is a Neb-B.

I believe some earlier sources had some of the GR75s as fireships. You'd kamikaze an explosives-laden GR75 into an ISD, and have the crew bail out before hand on a shuttle or something.

I love them pics of all those ships.... THAT CAN'T SHOOT!!!!!

*cough

space whales

also yeah. other than the GR75s that don't shoot, the ISD all don't move. ><

That is going to be one, BORING battle.

Deathstar flank forces rebels into the front arcs of 39 ISDs at 0speed. WHOOOOOOOO. Somebody get a nerf gun to simulate the deathstar.

Spoilers!-ish

BTW the Marvel (Disney) series Shattered Empire starts at the battle of Endor and goes to Ep 7. They say the rebels were indeed vastly outnumbered, but becasue of the sinking of the SSD and the Emperor and Vader dying on the death star (so they think), the Imperial fleet are suffering from massive chain of command issues and retreat to mass for a counterattack.

And if you've seen the trailer there is no new republic, these comics explain a bit of why. That's all I'll say to keep it as spoiler free as I can while making my point.

Finally I'll say shattered empire should be required reading for any star wars super fan.

I don't know who told you that there was no New Republic in the new canon but they were lying through their teeth because Aftermath shows that there definitely is a New Republic.

Whether or not it is still around by Episode VII is unknown but it existed.

I believe some earlier sources had some of the GR75s as fireships. You'd kamikaze an explosives-laden GR75 into an ISD, and have the crew bail out before hand on a shuttle or something.

Bingo that was part of the space battle scenes in the Return of the Jedi novelization.