So far we have a MC for every rebel large base. And often shown in media, usually the Mon Cal cruisers make up the Cap/flag/lead ships of the rebel fleet. Shouldn't the Empire then be hunting down every sighting of Mon Cal ships with extreme prejudice? How did the Mon Cal component of the fleet successfully elude destruction/the Empire for the 4+ years of the GCW?

According to the current canon, the Empire subjugated Mon Cala quite some time before Rogue One. The Exodus Fleet were those who escaped (apparently because the Empire didn't realice that some "buildings" were actually ships). Considering that what we see at Endor is the majority of the rebel fleet, it seems calamari ships weren't that common after all...

6 minutes ago, BillHimclaw said:

According to the current canon, the Empire subjugated Mon Cala quite some time before Rogue One. The Exodus Fleet were those who escaped (apparently because the Empire didn't realice that some "buildings" were actually ships). Considering that what we see at Endor is the majority of the rebel fleet, it seems calamari ships weren't that common after all...

I heard that there weren't enough models to depict the envisioned Rebel fleet in its entirety at Endor, so the stuff we see is approximately 1/3 the actual fleet size. I am not sure of the validity of the statement, but if that is so, Man Cals were more common than the movie wound indicate.

Plus, at least in old cannon, most of those mon cal ships were massive civilian transports that were refitted for combat before the battle of Endor.

Old Canon, the Mon Cal home world, Dak, was subjugated early on, because it had the largest shipyards in the outer rim. Prior to that the Mon Cal built and crewed luxury passenger liners. During the occupation, the Empire allowed them to continue, but monitored the process so the Mon Cal couldn't build warships. The newer ships were however designed with the intent of being able to upgrade them to combat capability after completion. This was done in secret at underwater facilities.

Shortly after the battle of Yavin, the Mon Cal rebelled, and retook most of their sector. Apparently, they were able to hold it until the Empire fell, because of limited hyper lanes into the sector, giving them only a few avenues to defend. The Mon Cal ships in RotJ were the ones that could be spared from that Defense, not the totality of their resources.

To answer why it was able to continue to exist (this is all EU information, AFAIK the new canon can't be bothered with anything resembling self-consistent details), Admiral Ackbar and the fleet adopted a specific strategy, specifically that of being a "fleet in being". Essentially what that means is that they did their best to refuse to give the Imperials battle except when they possessed overwhelming advantage. However, because the fleet was large enough and powerful enough such a strike on an unprepared world would be devastating, both to the target and to the Imperial reputation, the Imperial Navy was unable to ignore the Mon Cal warships and was forced to fortify many worlds, pulling assets away from the search for the fleet itself. For a real world analog to this, consider how thinly the Kriegsmarine was able to stretch the Royal Navy in World War 2 with only a handful of (relatively new and advanced) cruisers and battleships, despite the fact that a battle between each side's combined forces would be less a battle and something more akin to the Battle of the Marianas (otherwise known as The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot).

The other advantage the Rebels possessed was a wealth of data on secret hyperlane routes from Wookiee hyperlane mappers, allowing them to evade Imperial blockades and patrols by hiding in the deep space between star systems and bouncing from world to world faster than the Empire could respond. Combined, this meant Admiral Ackbar could "safely" deploy units on raids (I believe it's the Independence that was usually used for fighter raids) to keep the Imperials honest, while continuing to keep his fleet dispersed and in hiding, waiting for targets of opportunity.

Some Mon Cal ships are large transports that were retrofitted for combat.

Some Mon Cal ships were luxury liners that were retrofitted for combat.

Some Mon Cal ships are actually cities that were built for space travel.

Many Mon Cal ships weren't in system when the Imps showed up. Many more escaped when the Imps showed up. I'd suspect that they likely found other shipyards that could be used to create new Mon Cal ships, however that is just speculation.

Keeping them hidden isn't a problem. The galaxy is huge. And the Empire doesn't have much of a presence outside the core worlds. Beyond that, there are probably legit non-military mon-cals still doing other tasks.

7 hours ago, Muelmuel said:

And often shown in media, usually the Mon Cal cruisers make up the Cap/flag/lead ships of the rebel fleet.

Most major Rebel capital ships are Mon Cal designs. But that doesn't mean that most Mon Cal designed ships are Rebel cruisers.

Going by just the films, for all we know there could be thousands of Mon Cal ships, of which only a handful have been converted to military use. Going by Legends... it depends which bit you ask. Mainly the idea is that when the Mon Calamari joined the Alliance (some time between ESB and RotJ), they brought a whole bunch of ships with them. That doesn't necessarily mean the Rebellion has access to more, or to shipyards.

New Canon (including Rogue One) now shows that some Mon Calamari were part of the Alliance pre-ANH, and the backstory of the Raddus from TLJ suggests that the Alliance had access to shipyards in the run-up to RotJ.

From what I understand of the New Canon, the idea behind the Alliance is that certain systems are in open rebellion against the Empire - which isn't nearly as centralised or all-powerful as the Legends version. And the Empire doesn't have the ships to keep them all subjugated (galaxies are big places). Mon Cala (or whatever you want to call it) is in the Outer Rim (in both Old and New Canon) - it's a long way to go to take out some shipyards that might be well hidden (underwater?). According to Wookieepedia, Mon Cala was on the Emperor's hit list for the Second Death Star. So the Empire just hadn't quite got around to it yet.

Because fish are better at hide and seek than Jedi.

Okay, I have nothing constructive to contribute. I should give up my Star Wars geek card. ?

Yeah, according to the Legends EU, at the height of the Empire they had some 10,000 Star Destroyers of various designs. If that were the case in the new Cannon, surrendering after the Battle of Jakku wouldn’t make much sense.

IIRC, in the old EU the Empire fractured into factions, with moffs and grand admirals grabbing as much power as they could.

1 hour ago, reegsk said:

Yeah, according to the Legends EU, at the height of the Empire they had some 10,000 Star Destroyers of various designs. If that were the case in the new Cannon, surrendering after the Battle of Jakku wouldn’t make much sense.

IIRC, in the old EU the Empire fractured into factions, with moffs and grand admirals grabbing as much power as they could.

Official numbers were actually 25,000+ Star Destroyers.

30 minutes ago, RyonOlson said:

Official numbers were actually 25,000+ Star Destroyers.

Well that's way more than 400 points....

48 minutes ago, durandal343 said:

Well that's way more than 400 points....

Only a 3million point game.

Only.

Just think about the crew number needed for all those ship

4 minutes ago, DOMSWAT911 said:

Just think about the crew number needed for all those ship

1,169,625,000.

Assuming standard compliment.

In respnse to the confused emoji hahaha

Wookiepedia has standard compliment at:

9235 officers

27850 enlisted

9700 stormtroopers.

Per ship there are 46785 crew. Times that by the 25000 ships and well.

When the empire took Mon Cala in Canon a whole bunch of civilian ships, which the empire mistook for buildings (some like the Profundity actually were used as such), took off with a large part of the population and fled through Hyperspace, hence the name Exodus fleet. Afterwards (After joining the Alliance or before?) they began to refit their rides into warships. One of the first ones to be completed was the Profundity, which explains why it is the only one at Scarif.(The whole belt around its hull is actually added on as part of the modifications.) The others were probably still sitting in some remote corner of space undergoing heavy modifications. I'm going to just make the assumption that the single Home One type present above Dantooine during the Alliances formation was not yet modified. By the time of RotJ seemingly a very large part(all?) of them were completed. I guess the exodus fleet was the largest contributor of naval vessels for the Alliance (in long-term) and it's only source of capital ships.

Note that "star destroyers" don't only mean ISDs. There were VSDs, Venators, Gladiators and other smaller ships. But as they are all "star destroyers" they add to the 25000. If you consider how many systems are in the Empire alonr (not to mention the contested Outer Rim or the Corporate Sector) there would be about on average one capital ship per starsystem. That isn't that many...

7 hours ago, reegsk said:

Yeah, according to the Legends EU, at the height of the Empire they had some 10,000 Star Destroyers of various designs. If that were the case in the new Cannon, surrendering after the Battle of Jakku wouldn’t make much sense.

IIRC, in the old EU the Empire fractured into factions, with moffs and grand admirals grabbing as much power as they could.

That's (more or less) how the new history went, too. Once the Empire "lost" at the Battle of Jakku, it was over only as a single organized force. The war ended, the Imperial remnant retained whatever territory it still held, although that pretty quickly fractured as challenges to the leadership went on internally.

(This is one of the reasons the First Order was as successful as it was - once it established itself as the most powerful military , and the most likely source of a new Empire, the various fragmented formerly-Imperial forces started to align behind them)

Anyway, that strays a bit from this question, and notably in a way that misses the point a bit. The Rebels never had a chance in a fleet-to-fleet engagement. They never had parity - not even local parity. Whatever the 'intent' for the filming of Return of the Jedi was (and I doubt the claims of a larger Rebel fleet), the dialog in the movie makes it quite clear that the Rebel fleet was dwarfed by the Imperial fleet present. IE., that the Star Destroyers - on their own - would have had no issue ending the Rebellion, but the Emperor wanted to make a point of the Death Star's power to totally crush Luke's confidence.

So, sure, it's possible that the Rebel Alliance only has Mon Cal ships as their 'large' ships - but that doesn't mean there were many of them. The Mon Cal probably did try to hide them as much as they could, and certainly the Empire WAS hunting down any Mon Cal ship they could find...just as they did any Rebel ship/cell/base/etc.

The key thing to remember is how very short this war was - from Yavin to Jakku, you are only looking at about 6 years (IE., roughly the same length of time as WW2 in Europe). Nobody in Europe started a battleship during the war and finished it - there just wasn't enough time. Even the US, largely untouched by the war and with the largest economy on the planet at the time, only managed a small handful of the Iowa-class ships (and all of those were designed and ordered before the war). So we're not really looking for 'active shipyards' or something for the Empire to be hunting down, here. Whatever the Rebels had before Yavin...that's what they have. They aren't getting anything new. Smaller frigates and corvettes, sure - you tend to be able to just buy those outright from third parties of negotiable loyalty. But capital ships ? Nah...

20 minutes ago, Norell said:

Note that "star destroyers" don't only mean ISDs. There were VSDs, Venators, Gladiators and other smaller ships. But as they are all "star destroyers" they add to the 25000. If you consider how many systems are in the Empire alonr (not to mention the contested Outer Rim or the Corporate Sector) there would be about on average one capital ship per starsystem. That isn't that many...

A super star destroyer is also a star destroyer.

If we look at all the star destroyer types (and good god thats a lot) the most common are imperial star destroyers.

Ergo my assumption was contained within those 25000 SDs, some were small, some were large but most were Imp Stars. Much easier to do maths if i just took one set of data to give a estimate =D

Just my way of thinking.

( SSD carried supplies for around 300,000 people, ISD about 50,000 VSD about 6000)

Of course, if you want to try and find the real figure..... go ahead

Edit: got carried away

Agree however that spread out these SDs werent actually that many, i mean one ISD could hold a system quite easily.

I apologise if it's already been said.

The new canon, from the Rogue One visual guide is this.

After being subjegated in the clone wars the Mon Calamari built city so they could flee if time got bad again. They were buildings in there city's that were also space worthy ships. The profundity was a government center before it left Mon cala in the Exodus fleet. When the empire came to subjegated Mon cala the Mon calamari were ready and the ships disguised as buildings left Mon cala and in deep space they began to refit these ships for combat. The profundity was one of the first ready for battle.

Related but off-topic: bothans, famous for spycraft... who ever trusted a bothan with secrets in the first place?

19 minutes ago, Nostromoid said:

Related but off-topic: bothans, famous for spycraft... who ever trusted a bothan with secrets in the first place?

Pushes up glasses

ACCCCKSHUUUUALLY

They appeared in Shadows of the Empire, where they played the Jyn Erso role for Luke's turn as Leia. It was certainly A book. Not a terrible one, but it also has Leia being seduced by space pheremones.

This may actually have been more terrible than I remember....

On 2/5/2018 at 11:21 PM, xanderf said:

The key thing to remember is how very short this war was - from Yavin to Jakku, you are only looking at about 6 years (IE., roughly the same length of time as WW2 in Europe). Nobody in Europe started a battleship during the war and finished it - there just wasn't enough time. Even the US, largely untouched by the war and with the largest economy on the planet at the time, only managed a small handful of the Iowa-class ships (and all of those were designed and ordered before the war). So we're not really looking for 'active shipyards' or something for the Empire to be hunting down, here. Whatever the Rebels had before Yavin...that's what they have. They aren't getting anything new. Smaller frigates and corvettes, sure - you tend to be able to just buy those outright from third parties of negotiable loyalty. But capital ships ? Nah...

I’m inclined to share your belief... But we can’t assume the Mon Calamari have the same obstacles in shipbuilding we do. A workforce of unknown size, technological capabilities, and efficiency (droid labor, perhaps?) could significantly change the timeframe. Suitable nonmilitary cruisers could even have been already partially constructed, requiring much less work than starting from scratch.