This as an interesting look at Rogue One's military failures.
Lessons from Rogue One
The person that wrote understands that it wasn't a sanctioned military operation? Right? Task Force Smith, though woefully unprepared, was completely sanctioned by the US governmental and military apparatus. Comparing the two task forces seems unwarranted.
The Rebels are crippled from the get go as while a Majority of their Officer Corps comes from the Former Republic/Empire, they really do not have training facilities that are permanently based, thus it’s hard to pass on proper skills for different environments,as well as tactical and strategic command philosophy in anything resembling a unified fashion. Most of thier various fleets operate on a cellular structure that do mostly hit and fade operations. Yavin from what I have read was the Rebel High Command. And we all saw how much of a mess that place was, just trying to keep the various cells working with each other
The Empire has it’s own problems as it literally can build more equipment than it has properly trained Officers and Soldiers to use said equipment. Not to mention it’s personnel are highly indoctrinated (think Old Soviet Model) in the usage of tactics and various doctrines, thus leading to some flaws in deployment and tactics. According to the lore, The former Grand Army of the Republic was largely allowed to retire its experienced corp of troopers and officers as the new Imperial Army and Navy came to the fore (with some exceptions for the Stormtrooper Corps), which makes me shake my head in amazement, wondering who thought this was a good idea. Add in the Infighting between the various Imperial service branches and it’s a wonder the rebels don’t do more damage.
The Rebels are crippled from the get go as while a Majority of their Officer Corps comes from the Former Republic/Empire, they really do not have training facilities that are permanently based, thus it’s hard to pass on proper skills for different environments,as well as tactical and strategic command philosophy in anything resembling a unified fashion. Most of thier various fleets operate on a cellular structure that do mostly hit and fade operations. Yavin from what I have read was the Rebel High Command. And we all saw how much of a mess that place was, just trying to keep the various cells working with each other
The Empire has it’s own problems as it literally can build more equipment than it has properly trained Officers and Soldiers to use said equipment. Not to mention it’s personnel are highly indoctrinated (think Old Soviet Model) in the usage of tactics and various doctrines, thus leading to some flaws in deployment and tactics. According to the lore, The former Grand Army of the Republic was largely allowed to retire its experienced corp of troopers and officers as the new Imperial Army and Navy came to the fore (with some exceptions for the Stormtrooper Corps), which makes me shake my head in amazement, wondering who thought this was a good idea. Add in the Infighting between the various Imperial service branches and it’s a wonder the rebels don’t do more damage.
dupe post. Sorry about that
46 minutes ago, Oden Gebhac said:The person that wrote understands that it wasn't a sanctioned military operation? Right? Task Force Smith, though woefully unprepared, was completely sanctioned by the US governmental and military apparatus. Comparing the two task forces seems unwarranted.
But they both suffered from going in hasty and kinda half baked. Smith was a holding action based more on reputation than capability, R1 was a raid with the core concept sorted, but no details or second half.
Smith's plan was essentially: 1) Go to Korea with undersized, under equipped, undertrained unit. 2) 'Merca! 3) ? 4) UN Reinforcements arrive, 5) Victory.
Rogue 1 was: 1) Infiltrate Scarif, 2) Diversion, 3) Get the plans, 4)? 5) Victory.
so yeah, some missing warfare checks there...
RPG players notoriously plan far less than what the Rogue One raid involved.
28 minutes ago, Oden Gebhac said:The person that wrote understands that it wasn't a sanctioned military operation? Right?
Yep, as a matter of fact that where he says the mission first goes wrong.
30 minutes ago, Oden Gebhac said:Comparing the two task forces seems unwarranted.
He's not actually comparing the two, not directly at least. He brings up Task Force Smith as a real world cautionary tale but he readily acknowledgeds that these are two different types of missions. His critque of the miliatry faults of Rogue One are more born from mistakes that are made in the movie vs that for raids in general. Task Force Smith doesn't factor into the analysis of Task Force Rogue One. Thus I don't think he's truly comparing the two.
Just now, HappyDaze said:RPG players notoriously plan far less than what the Rogue One raid involved.
Perhaps, but for a game set in a war I found his analysis to be things that PC's should maybe consider when they do their own planing.
3 hours ago, HappyDaze said:RPG players notoriously plan far less than what the Rogue One raid involved.
Not with the kind of GMs I have played in the last 20 years. I can't create a new character every second session or so. ;-)
13 hours ago, Ghostofman said:But they both suffered from going in hasty and kinda half baked. Smith was a holding action based more on reputation than capability, R1 was a raid with the core concept sorted, but no details or second half.
Smith's plan was essentially: 1) Go to Korea with undersized, under equipped, undertrained unit. 2) 'Merca! 3) ? 4) UN Reinforcements arrive, 5) Victory.
Rogue 1 was: 1) Infiltrate Scarif, 2) Diversion, 3) Get the plans, 4)? 5) Victory.
so yeah, some missing warfare checks there...
Rogue 1's plan was more:
1) Infiltrate Scarif
2) Diversion
3) Get the plans
4) Transmit the plans to anyone who can receive
5) Die
I don't think anyone on that mission had any illusions about the chances they'd survive.
I need to see it again, the more I think the more it seems like there basically was no plan of any kind.
I mean, they infiltrated OK. And set up the diversion. But was the Arrival of Raddus's fleet actually part of the plan? Or did it just kinda happen to work out after the raid was underway? Could they broadcast through the shield, or did it have to drop?
I don't really remember.
But still, while they all seemed to accept that survival was slim, they also kinda made no effort to try and make a plan that assumed survival was even possible.
The writer makes the point that had Rogue One laid out a more completed raid plan they actually would have had a chance. The first half of the plan wasnt bad. Had they done what he suggests (establish rally points, position themselves to be able to support each other, determine a method to withdraw to the shuttle, ECT) then they might have been able to skip the entire foolishness with the comm tower and just beat feet back to the shuttle, or establish a defendable strong point for later pickup by a u-wing. If Raddus's part was semi-intentional then Blue Squadron's arrival would allow the raid to move to the air, giving the shuttle cover to get clear until the shield dropped and the entire force would be able to withdraw...
No plan, just sheer luck that the fleet arrives after the rebellion noticed the suicide mission of the rogue one task force. It stays a suicide mission for everyone under the shield and that was literally the plan. Go in and die as they had never the means to transfer the data out. Yes, the movie is that stupid. No exit strategy.
edit: I really would like to see the original planned ending for the movie, the version in which they actually survive. Maybe they cut parts of the plan out which you have make the whole operation more reasonable.
Edited by SEApocalypse6 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:No plan, just sheer luck that the fleet arrives after the rebellion noticed the suicide mission of the rogue one task force. It stays a suicide mission for everyone under the shield and that was literally the plan. Go in and die as they had never the means to transfer the data out. Yes, the movie is that stupid. No exit strategy.
Well that is Star Wars as intercourse. I mean look at Luke's plan to rescue Han. It essential was "We all get captured, and then ham-fistedly self-escape at literally the last possible moment."
So I mean, par for the course, just fun to rant about...
Not really comparable. There was a clear exit strategy as in "just get the **** out" not an impenetrable force field holding them in with jabba's grunts. Luke did as well place people all over jabba's entourage and prepared weapons from himself too. So there was a long game of preparations in place and lastly, this is the most important point: Luke did use foresee to make his plan be so insanely specific for exact moments to play out like he wants. And he was still caught be surprise by the rancor.
So Rogue One is quite different from "Place people in the palace, get captured, wait to get into the desert at the sarlacc pit, catch your lightsaber on that bark, clear the bark of hostiles, grab Leia and use a freaking magnet to to catch those two droids. It is the kind of plan which you can only formulate as a force user, the kind of plan which backfires on force users sometimes too as seen with the emperor on endor, but is consistent within the whole movie, Luke's behavior in dealing with Jabba mirrors what the emperor does to deal with the rebellion, it rhymes.
Possibly worth considering...
- It didn't appear to me that transmitting the plans was their first option. They planned to get the data tape and get out. Circumstances on the ground made it necessary to transmit.
- Reaching the point that transmission was necessary, it wouldn't have been an issue had Raddus' fleet not arrived. The shield gate was open until that point.
Another lesson from Rogue One:
If you're feeling moral qualms about shooting a weapon designer(Galen Erso), that may have intentionally put in a fatal flaw in a giant death machine, and then fail to notice an incredibly important military target(Orson Krennic) standing next to said designer, you deserve to die in a poorly planned raid.
I mean, Krennic's rank insignia and face is in full view through his scope for several seconds. As an Intelligence officer, he should have full knowledge of Imperial ranks.
I felt the movie was meant to blend a typical war movie with the star wars space opera we know. Heroes who do big courageous things with no hope of survival is part of both movie tropes so it fit well. Of course it isn't realistic, its a movie... a Hollywood movie... a Star Wars movie.
4 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:I felt the movie was meant to blend a typical war movie with the star wars space opera we know. Heroes who do big courageous things with no hope of survival is part of both movie tropes so it fit well. Of course it isn't realistic, its a movie... a Hollywood movie... a Star Wars movie.
Yeah, but in many regards the movie missed its mark with that. Using a tones of tropes from a well-known war-movies is very anti-star-wars which is to me more about using tropes from not so well-known movies. On top they do crazy and stupid things in the OT too, like rescuing Leia, and while everyone is still wondering how something as ridiculous is possible, Leia downright declares that this is a trap and they let them escape. This helps enormously with the suspension of disbelief. There is no one coming in Rogue One to do that for us. They just go in with no plan, they die and by sheer luck they still achieve the objective. It simply is not as much fun to watch because of that at least to me.
Yeah ok, that's fair enough. Personally I saw it differently, they knew the threat of the Death Star was real but those who should have helped didn't. If the entire rebellion had been behind the plan then things would have been very different. There would have been no real time pressure in that situation, they could afford a day of planning.
What actually happened was different. They had to act immediately since that ship was their only method of entry and the Rebels where probably going to do something with it, they had to steal it immediately. This also limited their resources, making intel almost nonexistent. But they knew it had to happen, they knew getting the plans would lead to a potential attack on that Death Star... without those plans the weakness in the system would never have a chance to be exploited.
Any way, as I said I saw it differently to many others and that's how cinema goes.
It's not luck, it's actively taking every chance until there's no chance left. Whether that's good tactics and good moviemaking is a different matter.
On 3/2/2017 at 2:06 PM, SEApocalypse said:No plan, just sheer luck that the fleet arrives after the rebellion noticed the suicide mission of the rogue one task force. It stays a suicide mission for everyone under the shield and that was literally the plan. Go in and die as they had never the means to transfer the data out. Yes, the movie is that stupid. No exit strategy.
Completely agree. No sense pouring over the flaws in a bad script and awful storyline. It was just done poorly. And, IMO, making a band of Rebels some ultra-efficient green-beret strike force is pretty anti-Star-Warsy to me. I mean, a dirt-farmer and a freighter pilot blew up the Death Star and no one had some "great plan" or efficient training. Too many fans out there playing these 1st-person shooter Deep-Ops games on Playstation and then carrying that over into SW.
2 hours ago, DurosSpacer said:Too many fans out there playing these 1st-person shooter Deep-Ops games on Playstation and then carrying that over into SW.
If only Star Wars hadn't already gone that way before huh? There is plenty of material in the Star Wars setting to draw upon that I don't think we can play people playing 1st person shooter games. Not when they make FPS games for Star Wars to begin with. Or write deep op style novels.
3 hours ago, DurosSpacer said:I mean, a dirt-farmer and a freighter pilot blew up the Death Star and no one had some "great plan" or efficient training.
Isn't that what the Rebel briefing on Yavin 4 is, though? Without it, and all the other pilots, Luke wouldn't have been able to succeed.
17 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:Isn't that what the Rebel briefing on Yavin 4 is, though? Without it, and all the other pilots, Luke wouldn't have been able to succeed.
They only succeeded because the DS didn't bother to launch it's own fighters (excepting Vader's personal command). That level of incompetence wasn't something that should be able to be planned for, yet it's common enough in Star Wars stories (and hopefully less present in SW gaming).
15 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:They only succeeded because the DS didn't bother to launch it's own fighters (excepting Vader's personal command). That level of incompetence wasn't something that should be able to be planned for, yet it's common enough in Star Wars stories (and hopefully less present in SW gaming).
I tend to agree, while the occasional dumb luck is fun I tend to enjoy succeeding because our team actually did well than because the GM played the Empire like morons on meth.