44 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

The same type of militia/guard units exist in the ST though. I think Bloodline makes the point that the new republic intentionally left defense mainly to each system.

If you're relying on supplementary material which the vast majority of film-goers will never see to fill in your plot holes you've got a VERY serious problem.

47 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

The entire fleet is, according to old legend sources, around 25‘000 stardestroyers and 2.4million ships. Which is a ridiculous number to have been built in 20 years and to be hunted down and destroyed in the one year between Endor and Jakku.

Thus why the old EU did it FAR better with it taking nearly 15 years for the Republic and Empire to come to a mutual Armistice; The Empire could have dragged the conflict out longer, and the Republic COULD have finished off the Empire give time, but at considerable cost to both sides that Pellaeon realized was just not worth it.

48 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

TL;DR: No navy, neither PT, OT nor ST, is large enough anyway.

This is NO EXCUSE WHATSOEVER for it effectively not existing at all in the new trilogy (or the prequels, for that matter)!

12 minutes ago, Ambaryerno said:

If you're relying on supplementary material which the vast majority of film-goers will never see to fill in your plot holes you've got a VERY serious problem.

As did the PT and OT.

12 minutes ago, Ambaryerno said:

Thus why the old EU did it FAR better with it taking nearly 15 years for the Republic and Empire to come to a mutual Armistice; The Empire could have dragged the conflict out longer, and the Republic COULD have finished off the Empire give time, but at considerable cost to both sides that Pellaeon realized was just not worth it.

No matter if it was better or not: it relied on supplementary material which means it had, as you said, a VERY serious problem.

12 minutes ago, Ambaryerno said:

This is NO EXCUSE WHATSOEVER for it effectively not existing at all in the new trilogy (or the prequels, for that matter)!

It does give us the necessary perspective. Star Wars was never science fiction but fantasy, and always horribly inconsistent in all kinds of things. They walked around in the vacuum of space in ESB ffs.

So you should hate on all the movies or not at all. But cherry picking and pretending that the OT was somehow this consistent master piece is hypocrisy.

12 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

No matter if it was better or not: it relied on supplementary material which means it had, as you said, a VERY serious problem.

I mean if you are saying that the post ROTJ stuff relied on supplementary material I don't know what to say, since well it was all supplementary material. You didn't need it to enjoy the OT or understand it, it was just there to continue the story rather than being used to fill in plot holes and explanations. There was plenty of that, but often wasn't needed as opposed to the ST leaving most people confused on how big the FO is, if it was a known galactic faction/group or if they were some sort of secret organization, and the state of the New Republic and what it was about.

20 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

As did the PT and OT.

I've already made clear my dissatisfaction with the Prequels. As for the OT, at the time it was made there WAS no EU to speak of. Only a smattering of comic books in the late-70s/early-80s, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, and the Holiday Special, none of which fill in actual gaps in the movies (in fact Boba Fett in the Holiday Special is the only thing I can even recall at all making it into Empire or Jedi from the early EU). This original films stand alone without them.

20 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

No matter if it was better or not: it relied on supplementary material which means it had, as you said, a VERY serious problem.

The only thing in the OT that suggested blowing up the Death Star in ROTJ ACTUALLY ended the whole conflict was the revised endings to the Special Editions. The post-Jedi EU is irrelevant to the films, and as AWD said is not needed to fill in any gaps or plot holes in the films. It exists to EXTEND the saga, not fix it.

Unless you have something better for me than empty strawman arguments I'm done talking to you.

18 minutes ago, Animewarsdude said:

I mean if you are saying that the post ROTJ stuff relied on supplementary material I don't know what to say, since well it was all supplementary material.

Luckily I didn't bring up the post ROTJ stuff, only EU parts for the imperial fleet during ROTJ.

18 minutes ago, Ambaryerno said:

As for the OT, at the time it was made there WAS no EU to speak of. [...] The post-Jedi EU is irrelevant to the films, and as AWD said is not needed to fill in any gaps or plot holes in the films. It exists to EXTEND the saga, not fix it.

I agree, the post ROTJ EU is irrelevant, which is why I didn't mention it myself. So much for strawmen.

The point I made was the the OT did not give any reasonable explanation for the size of the imperial navy. So the originals fall flat on that regard (as in many other ways, too). If you criticize the ST that they have a ridiculously small navy - which you did, so no strawman - then you should think why you expect anything else because a ridiculously undersized navy is the only precedent we have.

Just now, GreenDragoon said:

Luckily I didn't bring up the post ROTJ stuff, only EU parts for the imperial fleet during ROTJ.

Oh, okay, I thought you were talking about after.

45 minutes ago, Animewarsdude said:

Oh, okay, I thought you were talking about after.

It's still irrelevant because the OT doesn't give any reason to think the Imperial Starfleet is so ridiculously small that needs correcting, anyway. There's no fleet action in Star Wars, Vader's squadron in Empire is never stated to be the entire fleet, and nor is it stated in Jedi that the entire Imperial Starfleet is at Endor (in fact the film implies the opposite with Mothma's comments that the Imperial Fleet is scattered across the galaxy in an attempt to force an engagement with the Alliance). So no, you STILL don't need the EU material set during the OT to explain the situation.

The closest get to any sort of statement about the size of the Imperial Starfleet is Han's cut-short reaction to Alderaan's destruction ("It would take a thousand ships with more firepower than I—") which is not only incomplete, but can easily be dismissed as hyperbole.

Maybe the NR paired down their military, because they didn't want to be SEEN as being like the empire, ruling with military might?

1 hour ago, LTuser said:

Maybe the NR paired down their military, because they didn't want to be SEEN as being like the empire, ruling with military might?

That‘s exactly the official explanation.

Mon Mothma set the disarmament act into place, massively reduced the centralized governmental military and left the local defense to local militias or private companies.

But somehow that doesn‘t count because it‘s not in the movie, even though most viewers neither care nor are the details behind thesize of republic forces of any relevance to the story.

5 hours ago, LTuser said:

Maybe the NR paired down their military, because they didn't want to be SEEN as being like the empire, ruling with military might?

There's a difference between paring it down and what the films expect us to believe.

Regarding the New Republic, I think that believing or not if most of the fleet was stationned in the Hosnian System depends on what the viewer expected the New Republic to be in the first place.

If you expected the New Republic to be a big military force that protect the entire galaxy against possible threats, that doesn't make a lot of sense that most of the force would be stationned in the same system. But if you expect the New Republic to be more like peacekeepers (kinda like the UN if we were to draw analogy to our world), I think it makes sense.

Now, based on the movie only (Prequel and Original trilogy), I personally think it makes more sense that the New Republic would not have a strong army, just enough to interfere in case of small conflict.

If we go back to the prequels, the Republic didn't have a big army, that was the whole point of the Clone troopers, because they needed to build an army fast. The threat of the prequel was the Separatists, a group of system that wanted to dissociate themselves from the Republic, an intern threat. The Clone Wars led to centralizing the power into the Republic. Then, after the Clone Wars came the Empire. The Empire came to be from the Republic itself, it used its own military force against it to get control over the entire galaxy. Which in turn led to the Rebellion to bring the Empire down, the end of Episode 6 (if we're talking exclusively from the movie, that's what the ending of Episode 6 led us to believe, especially with the GL special edition where we see every planet celebrate the end of the Empire).

So what next? Where to rebuild from that? Both threats came from the inside, but the biggest one came from the decision to centralize the power. So, following the Age of Rebellion, I think it makes sense that the New Republic would go back to a decentralization of power. A small force to help, but nothing more. Just like it was before the Clone Wars.

Thinking that the New Republic should have a big army that is spread around the entire Galaxy is thinking that they should expect a big threat coming out of nowhere from the Unknown Region. Which nothing from the movies lead us to believe that it is the case. It's expecting the New Republic to act as if they were a country amongs a lot more in the Galaxy when it doesn't seems to be the case. It looks to me like, if we were to draw analogy to our world, every system is a country and the Republic is just there to bring universal laws, help build relationship between systems, and help in case of small conflicts, like the UN.

So, if from the movie we know that what brought the Republic down in the first place was to build a big army with a centralized power, why should we expect the New Republic to do the same error instead of going back to what it was prior to the Clone Wars? What makes us believe that every system that felt victim to the Empire would vote for it?

On ‎10‎/‎29‎/‎2018 at 8:36 PM, Ambaryerno said:

The whole "Entire Republic fleet chilling in one system" thing is absolutely absurd, and only shows how little the writers actually considered just how frelling HUGE space is. ****, what you're describing is pretty much what happened to the US battleship fleet at Pearl Harbor...and it frankly didn't affect America's ability to wage war in the end (the battleships — except Arizona and Utah — were all refloated and returned to service, most of them were outdated as front-line surface combatants within a year or so by the likes of the South Dakota and ESPECIALLY the Iowa-classes, and American strategy shifted towards the carriers which is what REALLY decided the naval war in the Pacific). Keep in mind that even if you knock out the active fleet, there's also the reserve fleet that gets maintained in a state of readiness, and can be brought online with little effort.

It's just a bad plot point.

This is why in my treatment I make the Hosnian System a single sector base rather than the whole shebang. It's a major enough installation that knocking it out could significantly hamper the Republic's ability to respond to the First Order in the short term, thus giving them time to establish a solid foothold, while acknowledging that the Republic if FRELLING HUGE and it would be virtually impossible to wipe out an entire galaxy-spanning space fleet with a single strike. It's far more forgiving to the suspension of disbelief.

I don't mind the idea that the "Republic Fleet" was pretty much a pittance/home guard formation if the hundreds or thousands of ships existed but weren't part of the Republic fleet - belonging instead to the system defence fleets of member worlds (so there might be a few hundred 'republic' ships but also a few hundred mon cala ships, a few hundred kashyyki ships, etc, etc) and that the Starkiller strike took out the 'quick reaction force' and the admiralty who'd be expecting to rush round rallying up the militia into a combined force. Putting those all in the same system would still have been stupid but far from unheard of levels of idiocy for a war-weary nation which doesn't think it has any serious military opponent left.

Add in multiple conventional attacks, and the various member worlds might not be prepared to release their fleets to a general muster because they don't know when a First Order destroyer is going to come hooning over the hyper limit in their own star systems. So you still have multiple fleets out there, but they're each sat their nailed to their respective homeworlds - which in turn adds in a political dynamic to the resistance, who have to play Mon Mothma mkII to convince people to rally a big chunk of their forces together.

On ‎10‎/‎30‎/‎2018 at 1:32 PM, Ambaryerno said:

If you're relying on supplementary material which the vast majority of film-goers will never see to fill in your plot holes you've got a VERY serious problem.

This. The 'we destroyed the death star and killed the emperor' doesn't necessarily mean "and we won the war" but it's a bit enough accomplishment to qualify for the end of the film regardless.

I think it's part the problem of a sequel trilogy. Episode IV didn't do too much worldbuilding; "Rebels Good, Empire Bad" and everything else is seen on-screen.

The Resistance=/=Republic and First Order=/=Empire isn't a bad thing, but it's never too well explained; I imagine the supposedly cut Leia & Political Advisor thread (her as you see the camera centred on the balcony in hosnian - apparently there were canned scenes) might have explained this better.

Mostly just cooler aliens in Canto Bight. The sequence of events was fine, but the aliens could have been better. The limited color palate was a restriction, but they just weren't a visually interesting bunch. Certainly not on par with the Cantina, Jabba's palace (but far better than Special Edition Sy Snoodles), or Maz's castle.

//

But that's not a fun response, in the spirit of the thread.

I'd do a "what-if." Maybe it'd be a better campaign for a RPG group than a movie, but the fact is, it'll never be a movie. It'll probably never be more than a post here.

Suppose Anakin survives the end of RotJ. He's turned away from the dark side and back to the light. Luke seeks to train more, and perhaps Leia goes with them. Because you see, Vader is still War Criminal Number 1. The genocide of Alderaan is not the kind of thing you can forgive. Even if Luke says he turned back to the light, Mon Mothma is still going to be 'Um, no." So they have to flee.

Vader's armor changes a bit (I don't like the pure-white version from one of the what-if style comic books), probably into something which more closely resembles what Obi-Wan wore. Brown and tan robes over plasteel. Maybe he gives some other name, not Anakin, not Vader. Tells people that he was nearly destroyed by Darth Vader in the Great Jedi Purge, since that's true, from a certain point of view.

So they wander, they train. They help the people on some random world with a problem they're facing. But Anakin knows it won't work. He can sense Leia's rage, as she deals with the trauma of Alderaan, with how Vader literally tortured her. There's no way he could be an effective teacher to her. Meanwhile, he sees his two children turned into outlaws and criminals, for helping him to evade justice.

So he turns himself in, stands trial, and deactivates his armor to die. But before he does, he tells Luke and Leia that he and the Jedi were wrong, so many years ago, to try to bottle away emotion. Feel, but feel in balance. Because it wasn't love which lead him to the dark side. And so Luke and Wedge live happily ever after. That's how I'm ending it, go tell your own version.

//

Also a fun idea: a filler animated adventure. Shortly after the destruction of the second Death Star, Leia finds out that Bail Organa might be alive. That he might have been off-world at the time of the destruction of Alderaan, and been held in a secret Imperial prison facility for years. But the Rebellion can't spare many troops to help rescue him, particularly since there's some evidence to suggest it might be a trap. So Luke and Leia, Han and Chewie, Threepio and Artoo team up with Hera, Chopper, Zeb, Kallus, and Rex. They get Sabine from Lothal, and then they raid the prison. Probably it all was a trick, but the heroes win, and some folks--if not the once they hoped to find--were in that prison to rescue. No massive stakes, just a fun excuse for a fun romp with the combined OT crew and the surviving Specters.

Threepio being flustered trying to take care of Hera and Kanan's kid.

Hera having to stop Chewie and Chopper from fighting.

Sabine blows more stuff up.

Rex has a moment of regret and remembrance with Artoo.

Verbal sparring between Leia and Kallus.

Han and Zeb grumbling about how things don't work.

At some point, Luke hears Kanan's voice, and it saves the day.

Do an Imperial reminant Thrawn trilogy. Not have many different ships.

I’d keep everything the same, but have Finn and Poe hookup. And I say that as a straight white male, that enjoys all things star wars (except WEG and kotor).

I would have distanced it further from the original trilogy, set it maybe 100 or even thousands of years later or even in another galaxy entirely that just borrows enough of the Star Wars aesthetic to be recognizable. If they wanted to do a sequel trilogy it probably should have been done much sooner before the actors got too old to make it work (other than Mark Hamill, he looks pretty good for his role).

At the very least I would not have set it up to undo everything the original trilogy had built up. If I'm doing my own thing anyway, it's better to establish it all at once rather than smash the old lego set and build something else with the pieces

Would have done it 15-20 years ago while the main cast was still young enough to have substantive roles in it.