Wait the rebels used a t65 xwing and the new ones are t70. So where tmdid the t85 come from?

From what i've heard, the New Republic uses T-85's as their front line fighter. The resistance uses T-70's as hand me downs from sympathetic governments.

The art book has some cool concept pics which I could see being fleshed out and being made canon.

Here are some pics I found: http://imgur.com/gallery/3a8Oq

There are some good designs there, although a couple look suspiciously like the gladiator. My main take away, though,is I will be utterly amazed if we don't get the Liberty class. They are once again prominent. I feel like they are almost guaranteed to be in wave 3 or 4.

Well maybe we wont see any, so far as the new movie showed the entire republic fleet was destroyed in orbit. That said maybe in the next films we could see some cool things like abandoned empire ships (fingers crossed for ssd) in secret empire instalations like the Maw.

I seriously doubt that was the entire Republic navy. Its largest fleet maybe but there is no logical reason I can see for the Republic to have its entire navy in one system during peacetime And honestly Hux is the only person who said it was destroyed and that could easily be an exaggeration on his part just like he claimed destroying one system would destroy the entire Republic.

3P0 says the Republic navy isn't with them but that could easily mean there was just no time for the navy to regroup, reorganize its chain of command, and establish contact with the Resistance before the Resistance had to launch its attack on Starkiller base.

Dear FFG,

Please provide a not-butt-tastically ugly medium Rebel ship.

Sincerely,

AF mkII haters club

The First Order in the book still uses ISDs alongside the newer Resurgent class SDs as well as Nebulon-K Frigates and other assortment of smaller support ships. I wonder how the new frigates defer from the older Nebulon-Bs. Please feel free to discuss:)

Maybe they are K shaped? I wish I was kidding.

In the classic Tie Fighter and X-wing vs Tie F pc games the Nebulon-B Mark II is sorta shaped like a K and it didn't look half bad.

this one?

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Nebulon-B2_frigate

This one makes a ton of sense...a tone. Shirt than neb b, more weapon mounts, more shielding and hull strength.

The lancer mentioned above has no purpose this does!!

Liberty very likely.

Well maybe we wont see any, so far as the new movie showed the entire republic fleet was destroyed in orbit. That said maybe in the next films we could see some cool things like abandoned empire ships (fingers crossed for ssd) in secret empire instalations like the Maw.

I seriously doubt that was the entire Republic navy. Its largest fleet maybe but there is no logical reason I can see for the Republic to have its entire navy in one system during peacetime And honestly Hux is the only person who said it was destroyed and that could easily be an exaggeration on his part just like he claimed destroying one system would destroy the entire Republic.

3P0 says the Republic navy isn't with them but that could easily mean there was just no time for the navy to regroup, reorganize its chain of command, and establish contact with the Resistance before the Resistance had to launch its attack on Starkiller base.

The Republic disbanded 90% of its navy after Jakku, relying primarily on each system to have its own navy. So yes, there's a very good chance The Republic as we know it is completely gone. (Excepting a Enterprise/Lexington/Saratoga situation which seems likely)

10 percent of even the Alliance fleet in canon would be hundreds of ships. And again why would they have the entire navy in one system during peacetime? The only reason the Alliance ever did so that we know of was when prepping for Endor and during Endor which were both in wartime and in a win the battle or lose the war scenario.

Well maybe we wont see any, so far as the new movie showed the entire republic fleet was destroyed in orbit. That said maybe in the next films we could see some cool things like abandoned empire ships (fingers crossed for ssd) in secret empire instalations like the Maw.

I seriously doubt that was the entire Republic navy. Its largest fleet maybe but there is no logical reason I can see for the Republic to have its entire navy in one system during peacetime And honestly Hux is the only person who said it was destroyed and that could easily be an exaggeration on his part just like he claimed destroying one system would destroy the entire Republic.

3P0 says the Republic navy isn't with them but that could easily mean there was just no time for the navy to regroup, reorganize its chain of command, and establish contact with the Resistance before the Resistance had to launch its attack on Starkiller base.

I'd imagine they'd use the exact same line for the Republic fleet as they did with the Imperials after Endor: too scattered and divided to provide a real resistance against the FO.

Well maybe we wont see any, so far as the new movie showed the entire republic fleet was destroyed in orbit. That said maybe in the next films we could see some cool things like abandoned empire ships (fingers crossed for ssd) in secret empire instalations like the Maw.

I seriously doubt that was the entire Republic navy. Its largest fleet maybe but there is no logical reason I can see for the Republic to have its entire navy in one system during peacetime And honestly Hux is the only person who said it was destroyed and that could easily be an exaggeration on his part just like he claimed destroying one system would destroy the entire Republic.

3P0 says the Republic navy isn't with them but that could easily mean there was just no time for the navy to regroup, reorganize its chain of command, and establish contact with the Resistance before the Resistance had to launch its attack on Starkiller base.

The Republic disbanded 90% of its navy after Jakku, relying primarily on each system to have its own navy. So yes, there's a very good chance The Republic as we know it is completely gone. (Excepting a Enterprise/Lexington/Saratoga situation which seems likely)

Assuming that the entirety of the Republic Defense Fleet was at Hosnian Prime, the Republic is definitely crippled but not out of the game. It could still rely on it's local planetary defenses forces but with no central government they will not be able to coordinate effectively to counter the guaranteed FO invasion.

The question now is how swiftly will the FO act to exploit the disarray caused by the loss of the Republic government and how quickly the latter can regroup and rally under the banner of the Resistance, with Leia and her command staff being the only people now with the leadership and experience to tackle the situation. I suspect we will end up seeing older generation warships making up much of the Resistance forces versus the state of the art tech of the First Order (sounds familiar....).

Well maybe we wont see any, so far as the new movie showed the entire republic fleet was destroyed in orbit. That said maybe in the next films we could see some cool things like abandoned empire ships (fingers crossed for ssd) in secret empire instalations like the Maw.

I seriously doubt that was the entire Republic navy. Its largest fleet maybe but there is no logical reason I can see for the Republic to have its entire navy in one system during peacetime And honestly Hux is the only person who said it was destroyed and that could easily be an exaggeration on his part just like he claimed destroying one system would destroy the entire Republic.

3P0 says the Republic navy isn't with them but that could easily mean there was just no time for the navy to regroup, reorganize its chain of command, and establish contact with the Resistance before the Resistance had to launch its attack on Starkiller base.

The reason is because JJ Abrams doesn't think about things like this and thinks throw away lines can solve it. It would have been fine to say the Republic fleet was crippled, loosing a big chunk of its strength, or because its command and control had been devastated, but it makes no sense that it would all be in one system. However JJ probably meant for it to be. Remember, this is the same guy who had people being able to see planets being destroyed light years away with their bare eyes, and who in Star Trek treated the destruction of Vulcan as almost driving the species extinct because there are only tenss of thousands left (devastating, yes, but they will have millions of citizens on off-world colonies, more than enough to prevent the species actually going extinct).

Not only was the fleet meant to be destroyed, but I am sure someone said "The Republic" was destroyed... which was dumb, as "only" 5 planets were blown up. Again, could have been very important planets, such as the centre of government, and/or industry, but if they are the biggest force in the galaxy they are going to have more than 5 planets. JJ really doesn't have any concept of scale.

I will be rationalising it as the Republic will now be too disorganised, scattered and weakened to provide effective resistance. It was an easy way to make it more believable.

Interesting so for the resistance we could have the T70 and a modified Mon Cal Cruiser and for the First Order we could have the Resurgent Class and Nebulon K which FFG might design like they did with the Raider.

Nothing original then! Fits with the rest of the ship designs of The Force Awakens.

Well maybe we wont see any, so far as the new movie showed the entire republic fleet was destroyed in orbit. That said maybe in the next films we could see some cool things like abandoned empire ships (fingers crossed for ssd) in secret empire instalations like the Maw.

I seriously doubt that was the entire Republic navy. Its largest fleet maybe but there is no logical reason I can see for the Republic to have its entire navy in one system during peacetime And honestly Hux is the only person who said it was destroyed and that could easily be an exaggeration on his part just like he claimed destroying one system would destroy the entire Republic.

3P0 says the Republic navy isn't with them but that could easily mean there was just no time for the navy to regroup, reorganize its chain of command, and establish contact with the Resistance before the Resistance had to launch its attack on Starkiller base.

The reason is because JJ Abrams doesn't think about things like this and thinks throw away lines can solve it. It would have been fine to say the Republic fleet was crippled, loosing a big chunk of its strength, or because its command and control had been devastated, but it makes no sense that it would all be in one system. However JJ probably meant for it to be. Remember, this is the same guy who had people being able to see planets being destroyed light years away with their bare eyes, and who in Star Trek treated the destruction of Vulcan as almost driving the species extinct because there are only tenss of thousands left (devastating, yes, but they will have millions of citizens on off-world colonies, more than enough to prevent the species actually going extinct).

Not only was the fleet meant to be destroyed, but I am sure someone said "The Republic" was destroyed... which was dumb, as "only" 5 planets were blown up. Again, could have been very important planets, such as the centre of government, and/or industry, but if they are the biggest force in the galaxy they are going to have more than 5 planets. JJ really doesn't have any concept of scale.

I will be rationalising it as the Republic will now be too disorganised, scattered and weakened to provide effective resistance. It was an easy way to make it more believable.

Only one person actually said the Republic or its fleet were destroyed in the movie though and they were doing so in a speech trying to hype up their troops so there is little reason to take them literally.

Interesting so for the resistance we could have the T70 and a modified Mon Cal Cruiser and for the First Order we could have the Resurgent Class and Nebulon K which FFG might design like they did with the Raider.

Nothing original then! Fits with the rest of the ship designs of The Force Awakens.

Actually there were a couple of all new First Order capital ship designs mentioned in the story the Nebulon-K class and Lancer class Frigates appeared in. A Dissident class of Light Cruiser, which I still think would be a more appropriate name for a Resistance ship class, and a Maxima-A class of Heavy Cruiser

C-390 also said, or at least implied, the fleet was destroyed, and frankly, if the Republic was still meant to be in existance, a small resistance base which maybe had 3 squadrons of fighters would not be next on your list of strategic targets. JJ Abrams doesn't do subtlety, so I think we should take things pretty literally to judge his intentions. However, yes, the statements can be rationalised if need be and as he will not be writing or directing the next films hopefully someone a lbit better at world building can fix the problems he created. However, we can't rationalise the planets being blown up and being visible to the naked eye. We saw people staring up at the sky seeing it happen... at least in Star Trek you could claim it was just a mental image of Spock's, as we only saw it in a memory.

I should state I still enjoyed the film, and I think JJ Abrams is very good at visual spectacle, and while he has an irritating habit of just thinking that references will a good movie make, he sometimes has interesting ideas. He just isn't very good at characters, story or pacing (pacing doesn't mean that there should always be something happening all the time, quiet reflection time is good for pacing, not bad), or at least his attention span doesn't let him run with things properly and make interesting ideas into good ones.

I am not looking forward to the Dreadnought. Looks like a pig in space.

C-390 also said, or at least implied, the fleet was destroyed, and frankly, if the Republic was still meant to be in existance, a small resistance base which maybe had 3 squadrons of fighters would not be next on your list of strategic targets.

But the reason the resistance base was the next target had nothing to do with military strength. It was targeted specifically to eliminate the chance the Resistance could find Luke.

I am not looking forward to the Dreadnought. Looks like a pig in space.

I am so ready for a Link Hogthrob commander card.

If that was the whole of the Republic fleet, than someone needs a little lesson in logistics.
For the price of building one Star Killer base, you could of built a fleet large enough to functionally accomplish the same thing in dozens of systems at the same time. Just jump in, Pearl Harbor the fleet, then bombard or blockade the planets. With dozens of equivalent fleets left to consolidate your victory. And it wouldn't have taken 30 years to build this fleet. The first Death Star took over 20, so I can't see SKB taking less than 30.

Over all, I liked the movie, but I didn't love it. It wasn't nearly as good as the first time, in part, due to Hollywoods "need" to dial everything up to eleven and hoping we don't notice we have already seen this. Twice.
And, as so so as the episodes were, they had a better story than what has been served up with VII. Given they had 37 years to work on the old Star Wars script since it first aired, you would have expected better. I'm hoping someone at head office takes their pants off their heads and sets JJ and the writers down for a chat.

If that was the whole of the Republic fleet, than someone needs a little lesson in logistics.

For the price of building one Star Killer base, you could of built a fleet large enough to functionally accomplish the same thing in dozens of systems at the same time. Just jump in, Pearl Harbor the fleet, then bombard or blockade the planets. With dozens of equivalent fleets left to consolidate your victory. And it wouldn't have taken 30 years to build this fleet. The first Death Star took over 20, so I can't see SKB taking less than 30.

Tactically, yes, but the New Order is very Command-and-control. Lots of bureaucracy and they like "one-size-fits-all" solutions that they can keep control of (rather than lots of disparate elements at play where folks might *gasp* have their own ideas).

http://warisboring.com/articles/star-wars-mega-weapons-make-awful-bureaucratic-sense/

C-390 also said, or at least implied, the fleet was destroyed, and frankly, if the Republic was still meant to be in existance, a small resistance base which maybe had 3 squadrons of fighters would not be next on your list of strategic targets. JJ Abrams doesn't do subtlety, so I think we should take things pretty literally to judge his intentions. However, yes, the statements can be rationalised if need be and as he will not be writing or directing the next films hopefully someone a lbit better at world building can fix the problems he created. However, we can't rationalise the planets being blown up and being visible to the naked eye. We saw people staring up at the sky seeing it happen... at least in Star Trek you could claim it was just a mental image of Spock's, as we only saw it in a memory.

As much as JJ is the man in the driver seat of TFA I don't think he had absolute authority over the story, that's the story group's job. What we got from TFA is the story that JJ and Kasdan wants to tell us and you can take what you see there at face value but since Kasdan is known for leaving out details and letting the audience figure it out for themselves its hard not to assume there's more to the film than what we see on screen. With canon being what it is right now the books and comics are important in filling in the blanks left by the movie. If you take that into account TFA is a more satisfying experience.

However, I do agree with you that the planets blowing up should not be visible in the sky. Its doesn't make sense that people at Takodana are able to see that considering the Hosnian system is no where near the planet where Han and gang were. Every time I watch that scene it looks as though the planet that was blown up was just next door but in actual fact isn't and that bugs me alot. That was one of only a few things that didn't sit right with me otherwise I thought the movie was fantastic.

If that was the whole of the Republic fleet, than someone needs a little lesson in logistics.

For the price of building one Star Killer base, you could of built a fleet large enough to functionally accomplish the same thing in dozens of systems at the same time. Just jump in, Pearl Harbor the fleet, then bombard or blockade the planets. With dozens of equivalent fleets left to consolidate your victory. And it wouldn't have taken 30 years to build this fleet. The first Death Star took over 20, so I can't see SKB taking less than 30.

I think its quite feasible that Starkiller Base may have been cheaper and faster to construct than the Death Star. It already benefited from the technology developed for the latter and they didn't have to build an entire space station. Instead The First Order established a base on a barren, snowy planet and built a gigantic intergalactic "trebuchet" that is powered by a nearby star. The base itself doesn't even cover the entire planet, only one side of the equator. You could argue that building a fleet would still be cheaper but it wouldn't allow them to strike at the New Republic and decapitate it from deep inside FO territory and allowing its fleets to invade and destroy a severely weakened enemy.

It wouldn't entirely surprise me if building a full conventional fleet would have been more expensive though faster then building Starkiller depending on how much of the infrastructure needed to build a fleet they had to build before starting on the fleet. There is also the question of how many crew Starkiller base requires compared to a conventional fleet.

If that was the whole of the Republic fleet, than someone needs a little lesson in logistics.

For the price of building one Star Killer base, you could of built a fleet large enough to functionally accomplish the same thing in dozens of systems at the same time. Just jump in, Pearl Harbor the fleet, then bombard or blockade the planets. With dozens of equivalent fleets left to consolidate your victory. And it wouldn't have taken 30 years to build this fleet. The first Death Star took over 20, so I can't see SKB taking less than 30.

Over all, I liked the movie, but I didn't love it. It wasn't nearly as good as the first time, in part, due to Hollywoods "need" to dial everything up to eleven and hoping we don't notice we have already seen this. Twice.

And, as so so as the episodes were, they had a better story than what has been served up with VII. Given they had 37 years to work on the old Star Wars script since it first aired, you would have expected better. I'm hoping someone at head office takes their pants off their heads and sets JJ and the writers down for a chat.

I have to say to whole logistical aspect of building the base didn't bother me. The same applies to the Death Star, and I am willing to give that a handwave of "it's just how the setting works, people build logically impractical doom weapons and that is fine". It was the unoriginality of it that bothered me, especially as if anyone had read the novels they would know that the whole "super-weapon of the week" thing got boring and dumb fast, as they just had to one up themselves every bloody time (the height of this being the Suncrusher, which destroyed entire start systems while being the size of the of a large starfighter... oh, and yes, it was invulnerable too).

I don't actually blame Holywood in this one. Holywood can do less "dialling to 11". Yes, they like a big blockbuster, and Star Wars was always going to fall into that, but big explosions and an exciting experience doesn't require a Death Star. I do put this down to JJ (and maybe Kasdan), as we have the experience of... well most of his other projects, but Star Trek specifically. There we had a similar experience of someone thinking that to get the feel of a franchise you need to just outright reference things all the time, and or just copy paste things from previous incarnations ("Oh, and here we have Star Trek 2 done all over again... but less well. Fantastic idea that, reminding us of a better film while watching yours). We had physically impossible things, literal blowing up of setting significant things in order to signal "this isn't your old x, we're going our own way... while retreading old ground", and a failure to give time to slow down, maybe because the writer realised that if you were allowed to do that the whole house of cards would collapse as you would get the chance to think "wait... that makes no sense." As we have similar problems between these two films, if I am looking to blame anyone I am going to look at the common denominator between them, which is JJ. The Marvel films, which are also owned by Disney, have largely been well handled, so I wouldn't blame Disney.

Now, JJ has a better handle and respect for Star Wars than he did Star Trek, so at least the film "feels" right, and it is enjoyable, it just irritates me that we did get something so derivative, especially when I was getting into the film and was thinking "yes, this is good, I am getting a real Star Wars vibe from this and it is fun" when the Starkiller base appeared and I just was ripped right into "oh, so you haven't done good this time, JJ."

C-390 also said, or at least implied, the fleet was destroyed, and frankly, if the Republic was still meant to be in existance, a small resistance base which maybe had 3 squadrons of fighters would not be next on your list of strategic targets. JJ Abrams doesn't do subtlety, so I think we should take things pretty literally to judge his intentions. However, yes, the statements can be rationalised if need be and as he will not be writing or directing the next films hopefully someone a lbit better at world building can fix the problems he created. However, we can't rationalise the planets being blown up and being visible to the naked eye. We saw people staring up at the sky seeing it happen... at least in Star Trek you could claim it was just a mental image of Spock's, as we only saw it in a memory.

As much as JJ is the man in the driver seat of TFA I don't think he had absolute authority over the story, that's the story group's job. What we got from TFA is the story that JJ and Kasdan wants to tell us and you can take what you see there at face value but since Kasdan is known for leaving out details and letting the audience figure it out for themselves its hard not to assume there's more to the film than what we see on screen. With canon being what it is right now the books and comics are important in filling in the blanks left by the movie. If you take that into account TFA is a more satisfying experience.

However, I do agree with you that the planets blowing up should not be visible in the sky. Its doesn't make sense that people at Takodana are able to see that considering the Hosnian system is no where near the planet where Han and gang were. Every time I watch that scene it looks as though the planet that was blown up was just next door but in actual fact isn't and that bugs me alot. That was one of only a few things that didn't sit right with me otherwise I thought the movie was fantastic.

I don't mind things not being fully explained. Many of the things I have seen touted as "plot holes" I never saw as an issue, as there is plenty of time to explain them in later films, or don't need full explanation in the first place. It is the lack of originality and the dumb stuff that irritated me, many of which were very similar to my irritations with the new Star Trek films, so as I said, the common denominator was the obvious culprit. I had thought it was a JJ only project, so it is news to me that Kasdan was involved in the writing... Guess I can reinforce my JJ prejudice by deciding that the interesting stuff that developed the characters and the story were Kasdan's doing, and the derivative elements, nonsense events and lack of pacing was JJ. I realise that is possibly totally unfair, and unfounded, but prejudices rarely are.

As a reviewer I enjoy has said, a film should stand on its own merits. If you need to read a comic or a book to properly get the film then the film hasn't been made well, even if it has interesting ideas.

As I said, the planets blowing up is almost identical to Star Trek, when Spock could see Vulcan being blown up. This is why I would attribute that to JJ.

To be fair, I would still rate the film a 7 out of 10, (while Star Trek would get a low 5). I was just hoping for an 8 or 9 experience, and was dissapointed.

I think you he proliferation of planet killing super lasers is interesting. I mean, here on earth we couldn't provent the spread of nukes or any other combat technology, so how would the galaxy?

And for those wondering, yes the destruction of multiple planets would kill the republic, can you imagine if DC and four other populated states were just vaporized? The US would crumble instantly.

Also, also: You still need a strong navy in peacetime. Mainly for protecting trade. Either from pirates or angry governments, or rogue systems. If two sectors producing space-ore suddenly decided to prevent ships from using their space-canal it would have a far reaching impact in galactic economics. And having a strong navy is a deterrent to that.

Given the scale of Star Wars, this is more like Washington and the surrounding area getting vapourised. Traumatic? Yes, Crippling? Yes. See the UNited States cease to exist? No. There is still a heck of a lot of people and real estate that hasn't had anything happen to it.

The Republic's military was reduced to ten percent with the bulk of its forces shifted to local defense fleets. The question is ten percent of what? Ten percent of the rebel fleet, ten percent of the fleet it had when the war ended, or ten percent of the Imperial fleet in its prime? in any case we are talking about a massive force with hundreds of ships and several battle groups. That's a bit much to keep in one system during peacetime.

If that was the whole of the Republic fleet, than someone needs a little lesson in logistics.

For the price of building one Star Killer base, you could of built a fleet large enough to functionally accomplish the same thing in dozens of systems at the same time. Just jump in, Pearl Harbor the fleet, then bombard or blockade the planets. With dozens of equivalent fleets left to consolidate your victory. And it wouldn't have taken 30 years to build this fleet. The first Death Star took over 20, so I can't see SKB taking less than 30.

I think its quite feasible that Starkiller Base may have been cheaper and faster to construct than the Death Star. It already benefited from the technology developed for the latter and they didn't have to build an entire space station. Instead The First Order established a base on a barren, snowy planet and built a gigantic intergalactic "trebuchet" that is powered by a nearby star. The base itself doesn't even cover the entire planet, only one side of the equator. You could argue that building a fleet would still be cheaper but it wouldn't allow them to strike at the New Republic and decapitate it from deep inside FO territory and allowing its fleets to invade and destroy a severely weakened enemy.

DS1 was 160km, DS2 was 900km. A planet large enough to have it's own atmosphere would be a little bit bigger than DS1, DS2 and the old Empires fleet, combined. Forgetting the cost of the weapon, how did they afford the hyper drive large enough to move a whole planet to its next source of ammo?