Since there's no specific "background/setting" forum, this will have to go here. For those unaware, rivet counting is a term that comes from historicals and refers to people with a borderline unhealthy interest in the minutiae of their area of interest - a definition I'm fair certain applies to many of us ?

Of course, it's a bit more difficult to be a rivet counter in Star Wars given the history of the franchise's multiple different "tiers" of content canonicity and the sometimes maddening disregard for consistency. Rarely is the issue more evident than when it comes to the depiction of Imperial military ranks and insignia.

You have the ostensibly meaningless system from ANH where plaques were designed and assigned based on "it looks cool on that dude". You have the genuinely weird ESB system that is so compressed, even accounting for the silly "code cylinders also help indicate rank" convention, you can only cram in eight or so ranks for the entire command structure, and which led to the truly awful mess of a chart in the Warfare sourcebook trying to reconcile it, and then of course you have RotJ where a costume department error led to every Imperial officer getting an ESB-system Commander plaque regardless of actual rank. Still, based on just the three original films, there was a "standard" conception of the Imperial rank structure: the ANH-era stuff was sector-specific and so had a lot of variation, the ESB-era versions were a universal replacement that came about in the post-Yavin reorganisation of the Imperial military, and RotJ's mistake is ignored.

And then along came Rebels and Rogue One and nuCanon comics, and fouled that right up. Now, I didn't care for the convention that had previously developed, trying to in-universe explain away the ANH-era inconsistencies was a mistake IMO and the daft ESB replacement system was, well, daft, but it was at least a standard. We now have more structured ANH-era insignia and also the appearance of ESB-era insignia pre-ANH.

I spent a good long while bashing my head against the wall trying to develop something that reconciles all of this nonsense, given Lucasfilm seem disinclined to bother, but in the end I found someone else's effort much more compelling and comprehensive than anything I'd managed - Himser over on stardestroyer.net(be warned, the forum generally would definitely meet Old Ben's definition of a hive of scum & villainy ? ) has put together a chart that manages to systemise almost every screen example of ANH-style ranks(a handful have to be ignored because of their inconsistent IRL conception) in a way that allows for a full command structure with divisional variance, AND reconcile it with the ESB insignia being used at the same time, AND divorces code cylinders from rank entirely as it should be. It's not "canon" of course, and some people will choose to depict only what appears on screen regardless of how much sense individual screen appearance make relative to each other or any external standard, which is an entirely valid way of going about things, but for myself I crave these kinds of comprehensible systems and will be using the chart below.

What's everyone else's view - obviously some won't care either way, but I'd be interested to hear from people who prefer the "screen only, regardless of consistency" approach as to why they prefer it.

As of SOLO, we now know that the Imperial Army and the Imperial navy both use the same rank plaque for senior leutenent.

Source:

1 hour ago, Indy_com said:

As of SOLO, we now know that the Imperial Army and the Imperial navy both use the same rank plaque for senior leutenent.

Source:

The outfit Tobias Beckett stole from a dead guy.

I'll have to take your word for that until the film comes out for home viewing or I can get a look at the Guide, as I can't find any pictures of that which are clear enough to be certain...

EDIT: And I'm in dumb-mode today, how do you do spoilers on this forum software?

22 minutes ago, Yodhrin said:

I'll have to take your word for that until the film comes out for home viewing or I can get a look at the Guide, as I can't find any pictures of that which are clear enough to be certain...

EDIT: And I'm in dumb-mode today, how do you do spoilers on this forum software?

1) Lego made an acurate minifigure showing the rank plaque.

2) [ spoiler] [ /spoiler] (just remove the spaces from the code to the left.)

1 hour ago, Indy_com said:

1) Lego made an acurate minifigure showing the rank plaque.

2) [ spoiler] [ /spoiler] (just remove the spaces from the code to the left.)

Stop using spoiler tags!!!! Lol. As a 501st member, I have to go with what's portrayed on film...but I must say, this chart looks very good.

28 minutes ago, Darth Lupine said:

Stop using spoiler tags!!!! Lol. As a 501st member, I have to go with what's portrayed on film...but I must say, this chart looks very good.

I'm operating on the "1 month since release" spoiler system.

So unless the thread has Spoiler in the title, almost all SOLO discussion will be written in spoiler tags.

24 minutes ago, Indy_com said:

I'm operating on the "1 month since release" spoiler system.

So unless the thread has Spoiler in the title, almost all SOLO discussion will be written in spoiler tags.

Ah, makes sense....lol

Oh dear, I know I will add just more weirdness and distraction, but the infamous Curtis Saxton made a crazy rank system ages ago ?

http://www.theforce.net/swtc/insignia/badges.html

1 hour ago, L_A_D said:

Oh dear, I know I will add just more weirdness and distraction, but the infamous Curtis Saxton made a crazy rank system ages ago ?

http://www.theforce.net/swtc/insignia/badges.html

Oh aye , that was the first one I found when I went looking and by the time I finished reading through the conversion system for switching between the three different schema I felt like I'd just spent an afternoon of quality time in the embrace of a Bor Gullet ?

1 hour ago, Yodhrin said:

Oh aye , that was the first one I found when I went looking and by the time I finished reading through the conversion system for switching between the three different schema I felt like I'd just spent an afternoon of quality time in the embrace of a Bor Gullet ?

That's Curtis Saxton, yeah! Gotta love him. ?

I don't know if his other articles are also still around, like when he calculated the energy output of an ISD lasercannon by how much energy would be needed to pulverize an asteroid like it was shown in ESB's asteroid field scene...

Herm, I just spent a good amount of time analyzing the Himser chart, and it seems to make sense to me. As far as how accurate it is, I don't really know. The best way I found to make sense of it is to start at the bottom, and to start with the 3 main branches - Imp Navy, Imp Army, and Imp Ancillary Branches. Here we have simple single square markings, and it defines the base colors - Blue = Navy, Red = Army, Yellow = Support. We also learn that the number of chits is a quick way to glance at how high of a rank someone is.

When we get to rank 4 (Lieutenant), we start mixing colors. But the primary color is *ALWAYS* on the left. Your home organization always comes first, and you can think of it as the more responsibility you have, the more you cross interact. And if you think of the blue of the Navy representing fleets, and the red of army representing people, and the yellow of support representing information, it makes sense that the navy officers have interaction with the people, while the army have interaction with the resources, and the information from the support coordinates directly with the people. The exception seems to be that your top rank is a "pure" rank, likely to quickly establish who is an Admiral or General and to separate them as important people. Same with Captain, though the Senior Captain and Commander I would expect to be flipped to be consistent with that (along with Second Lieutenant and Lieutenant). And this works all the way up to rank 15/16, which at that point, everyone gets the same rank insignia. Which I represent as you're an "executive" and it doesn't matter what branch you're from, you're in charge.

So that works for the 3 primary pathways. And with that framework established, it can easily be applied to the two intelligence divisions. You're really part of your base division (A/N) until you get to be a Lieutenant, at which case you start to provide a resource (intelligence) to your base function. Thus why your chits have a secondary color of yellow. This works for every rank under the same exact rules as before, with the exception of captain and Senior Captain (hey look, the same ranks I took exception to above), which are the only ranks that have a whole in the insignia. I would presume that's due to the solid color on the normal rank, and yet still wishing to be differentiated from a non-intel dude. The next time it's a solid color is at rank 14, and by that time, the "executive" roll mentioned above kicks in and it doesn't matter whether you're intel or not.

Finally, we can take a look at the special rankings. The first thing to note is that they are all two rows, and all of the military appointments are red/blue, as in they're in charge of both the fleet and human resources. Makes sense, and it's also a quick way to know who's in charge - if he's got two rows, he's in charge of the base/task force/etc. Which means an Admiral may outrank him, but the admiral is likely visiting. On the government side of things, again, the dual rows indicates quickly that the guy is in charge. But it includes yellow representing the resources and supporting functions, because running a planet has to deal with that type of stuff that running a fleet may not really care as much about.

So, at the end of the day, it seems almost completely consistent throughout the ranks, with the exception being Second Lieutenant vs. Captain, and Senior Captain vs. Commander, along with the weird missing chit on the intel Senior Captain and Captain.

I have put together a list of all rank badges I could find for the german star wars wiki. Maybe you'll find some valueable information for your research there. I listed a known individual, who wore that badge, too. Unfortunately it is written in German, so here are some translation advices: Leutnant - Lieutenant, Oberleutnant - Senior Lieutenant; Kapitän - (naval) Captain; Großadmiral - Grand admiral; Imperiale Flotte - Imperial navy. I hope this helps.

Link: http://jedipedia.wikia.com/wiki/Galerie_Imperialer_Rangabzeichen

On 6/1/2018 at 9:01 PM, Indy_com said:

I'm operating on the "1 month since release" spoiler system.

So unless the thread has Spoiler in the title, almost all SOLO discussion will be written in spoiler tags.

Solo is not released in theaters here until June 29th

older info , but checks out

That's one of the two different ESB systems that they try to reconcile in the Warfare book, and even using both at once plus an additional weird layer of "rank and title are actually different things but you have both at once and some of them are called the same, also some of the code cylinders are actual code cylinders but some of them are just decorative" that seems to exist purely because the writer wanted to match the IRL NATO rank style in which Commander is lower than Captain and needed to reconcile the two not being used that way in the OT.

I don't know if you can tell, but I really dislike the ESB rank system

The Rebel one still seems to be accurate, though they've added green pips to the blue of the navy and red of the army as a third branch for intelligence.

What's the warfare book?

Sorry - The Essential Guide to Warfare, published 2012 and so pre-DisneyCanon. I mean seriously, look at this atrocity(EDIT: and because this is the internet - yes, I'm being hyperbolic for effect, I do not actually consider the following image any kind of war crime):

?

I actually really, really enjoyed the Essential Guide to Warfare . The author did a really good job of explaining some of the oddities of SW warfare, and it felt like a military history book from the SW universe. As for the rank chart, it seems no more confusing than any others we've seen, and far less than some.

Interesting - My books are early 1994, The WEG imperial and rebel alliance source books...

12 hours ago, Alpha17 said:

I actually really, really enjoyed the Essential Guide to Warfare . The author did a really good job of explaining some of the oddities of SW warfare, and it felt like a military history book from the SW universe. As for the rank chart, it seems no more confusing than any others we've seen, and far less than some.

I strongly disagree. It's not Saxton-level insanity, sure, but it's still nonsense on toast. For example, a 2x3 badge with one cylinder can be a Commander(rank) who is a Captain(title), or a Captain(rank) who is also a Captain(title), while the same badge with two cylinders can be a Commander(rank) who is a Commodore(title) or a Captain(rank) who is a Commander(title), or just a plain old Commander(rank) without qualification, but only if you're from one of the "specialist"(ie, logistics or starfighter corps) branches. In the case of the Commander who is a Commodore and the Captain who is a Commander, the Commander in rank would actually outrank the Captain in rank because they've been assigned a superior title . The progression for ranks also makes no sense, since there's no sign of the Junior Captain the convention established at lower ranks would imply yet the one Captain rank has a Senior prefix. Oh, and lets not forget that for some silly reason, the code cylinders which help to indicate title on the left are actual code cylinders, but the ones used to indicate specialist rank on the right are just decorative tubes of metal that for some reason look exactly like real code cylinders... ?

The system Himser put together, by contrast, is clear, linear, contains adequate ranks and grades that are easily distinguished, still provides for the ESB-style plaques, and keeps code cylinders as what they should be - items assigned based on a variety of different factors almost entirely unrelated to rank.