Quote

Rebel Ion Cannon disables two Imperial Star Destroyers. There are two X-Wings escorting a shuttle. The shields are down on those ISDs. The X-Wings COULD run up on them and proton torpedo the bridges. It's a valid target of opportunity. But their mission is to escort the transports.

Except the bombers were already en-route by the time Leia gave the order to withdraw. Your example would be better if there were also Y-Wings with those two X-Wings who were flying under the assumption they'd be hitting the ISDs after the Ion shots.

Not to mention they're **** slow. The dreadnought was seconds away from taking out the cruiser just before the bombs were dropped. If they were still utilising Y-Wings, I could roll with the idea of them quickly getting back to the fleet and getting the heck out of dodge, but they're not. Poe even refers to it as a fleet killer, presumably with much better range and power than the First Order's Star Destroyers considering they're side-by-side with the Dreadnought and aren't firing on the fleet, whilst they're later in-range to at least fire pot shots at the rear of the Resistance fleet. They might not even have made it by in-time.

10 hours ago, Arbitrator said:

Except the bombers were a  lready en  -r  oute by the time Leia gave the order to withdraw.

That doesn't matter. The entire purpose of the bombing run was to allow for the evacuation.

The bombers also have hyperdrives, they don't need to literally fly back to the capital ships and land. They can hit the first rendezvous and land then.

On 12/7/2018 at 1:15 PM, Darth Revenant said:

Because they can't surrender. The First Order will execute them if they try, they can't really desert either because again they will be executed if they're found. And they can't manufacture stuff because they're not a proper state or an army linked to a state. They're a guerrilla group funded by sympathetic members of the senate and drawing on dissatisfied members of the republic military. Both of those are largely gone or without a central leadership anymore. So the Resistance, like nearly all real world guerrilla groups, needs to either buy gear or have it donated to them. They can also use stuff taken from the enemy if they can actually win. But at the time of the start of TLJ they have only what we see them have and chances of getting new stuff is slim to zero. If they can play for time then new support might manifest itself and they can become a unifying point for the resistance against the First Order, but if they die then chances are there isn't going to be anything unifying various resistance cells against the First Order and it will blow over pretty quickly. So at the time of TLJ any losses they take are losses they can't really afford, because they can't get any new stuff. They need to run with what they have and play for time, which is sensible since they don't know that the First Order can track them and they're quicker and more mobile than their pursuers.

Guerrilla fighting and wars are often not about outright winning as much as not losing outright. The Taliban lost in Afghanistan, or at least we like to think so. They're still there though, and they're getting building up strength again. Because guerrilla movements don't really stop or give up, as long as they believe in their ideology and there is some minute popular support, they will keep going. That's why you have movements like the Tamil Tigers who kept up their fight from 1983 to 2009, they didn't stop until the government managed enough reforms to win back popular support and their leader died. There is FARC who kept fighting from 1964 until 2017, they were communist and to start with funded and aided by Cuba and the Soviet Union. Later on they kept going through cocaine smuggling and kidnappings. They're still not entirely done by the way, some dissidents still remain out in the colombian jungles, possibly hopping the border to Venezuela where they're trying to set up again.

Anyway, the point of that was that the Resistance would likely keep up the fight for as long as Leia was around. And if she's gone then they might have another who can step into her shoes. Lots of guerrilla movements do survive the deaths of one or several leaders. Both FARC and the Taliban lost leaders at times, they kept on trucking. As long as they have enough manpower and gear to remain an ongoing concern they can keep up the fight. Losing all of your gear and manpower in futile attacks against an enemy that can take the blow is rather foolish though. 5 firetrucks against a carrier is an obvious trade, as long as you can afford to lose those firetrucks and the people in them. The enemy has more carriers, you don't have any more firetrucks and you don't know where you can find more. Then it becomes a bad trade.

1. But the overarching plan of the Resistance is literally to gather the remaining forces of the Republic. Now, I know that may be "Classified", but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to draw conclusions about the broad overarching goals.
2. "Any losses they take are losses they can't really afford"... yet yesterday they were willing to commit multiple fighter squadrons to recover a portion of a map?
3. I am familiar with asymmetric warfare. However, I don't think Episode 9 is going to take place 50+ years in the future, considering it seems like the time gap between 7 and 8 is about 2-24 hours.
4. You may have misinterpreted my analogy to firetrucks. My point was that the ships (or something similar) are probably available on most remotely civilized worlds.

On 12/7/2018 at 1:17 PM, KRKappel said:

Let me put it this way. Imagine you're leading a SEAL team. Your mission is to free and evacuate a POW camp. Toward the end of the evacuation, as refugees load into the backs of trucks, enemy reinforcements are spotted along a nearby service road. They happen to have a tank and jeeps with mounted guns. If you don't do anything, they'll wipe through the refugees. So, you and your team deploy to distract the convoy of armored vehicles from making it to the refugees, likely by firing at their flanks, and forcing them to stop rolling and try and smoke you out.

During this skirmish, you manage to actually damage the tank.

Decision time, you can engage in a direct frontal assault on the damaged tank, knowing there's no way some or most of you don't get cut down by the soldiers in jeeps with mounted guns, or you can stay on mission, fall back, and ensure the convoy gets where it's going.

It's really not a difficult decision at all. The tank doesn't matter. It's not part of the mission. It's what's known as a target of opportunity at that stage. You never (unless countermanded by a superior officer) let a target of opportunity take precedence or endanger success of your primary objective. In this case, it isn't even a judgment call, as Leia specifically tells him to fall back. It was a bad choice.

And that's the downside to being in a rebel or paramilitary unit, is guys like Poe are going to go off script and blow operations without seeing the bigger picture. The big ship doesn't matter. The First Order probably has dozens. Even if they just have five, the evacuation mission only has one bombing unit. The big ship isn't impeding their mission objectives, and the primary mission is to evacuate. Live to fight another day. When you're fighting on the smaller side of asymmetrical warfare, you do not make trades and fight a war of attrition, because you'll lose. You do not let engagements drag on, you launch a surprise attack, and it either works or it doesn't, and you bug out. If you stay, you suffer losses, and over time, you lose.

You don't make a big stand like that until the benefit outweighs the loss.

Let's look at the same sort of engagement from the perspective of the Battle of Hoth.

Rebel Ion Cannon disables two Imperial Star Destroyers. There are two X-Wings escorting a shuttle. The shields are down on those ISDs. The X-Wings COULD run up on them and proton torpedo the bridges. It's a valid target of opportunity. But their mission is to escort the transports.

Now, imagine Wedge decided hey, screw that, let's take out these ISDs, even if we lose a few fighters from the other ISD rebooting before we can kill it, taking out even one is a huge win for us. Do the rebels then have Red group or Gold group to make a run on the second Death Star a few months later? Are there enough fighters to send down that shaft to get a kill shot? Does Lando even take the gig flying solo (puns!) instead of as a leader of Gold group?

So yeah, I absolutely stand by the idea that this was a poor choice by Poe (to say nothing of the fact that it really wasn't Poe's call. Leia was on site and gave the order).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_of_opportunity

You do have a point about the relative importance if the Dreadnoughts were relatively common in the FO fleet. I was going off of the assumption (from Poe's reaction) that they were closer to the "Superweapon" end of the spectrum. If they're just slightly less common than run of the mill Star Destroyers, the bomber flight probably wouldn't be worth it (with the information on hand at the moment, clearly it was the right decision in light of the rest of the movie).

I'm also coming at the asymmetric warfare from a slightly different perspective. In Afghanistan, Taliban fighters took losses on failed harassing attacks on our unit, though we took no casualties. We were a hard target, and while running an insurgency, you want to hit the softest targets you can for maximum effectiveness. I doubt there's any softer military target with comparable value, and even an industrial target of the FO would have nominal starfighter defenses (or at the very least, be staffed by civilians, unless the Resistance suddenly doesn't care).

To take your tank analogy, if your invasion plans to liberate the country (which you may have known as a SEAL team) involved rallying a force of lightly armored vehicles to stand against the enemy's army and you know a heavily armored tank would easily rout such a force, you might very well take out the tank as a worthwhile target of opportunity. Once again, not a tactical target (because it has no bearing on the mission) but a strategic one.

On 12/8/2018 at 3:14 AM, Kualan said:

To address some of OP's points - I always felt a simple plot point change would have helped explain so many of Poe's and Holdo's actions throughout the majority of the film. That is, instead of having Leia figure out straight away that the FO now has "hyperspace tracking technology", have the Resistance believe there is a traitor on board the ship which is why the FO are able to find them. This explains Poe's rogue operation with Finn/Rose, his mistrust of Holdo, Holdo's mistrust of him and ultimately the mutiny and "redemption" arc.

It would also be very easy for them to find out later that there was no traitor (for example, when Finn/Rose/DJ are looking at all the tech being sold by the owner of the Canto Bight ship they steal, have them uncover some hyperspace tracking tech that's been sold to the FO) whilst still making everyone on board the Raddus' actions feel a little more grounded in logic.

Yeah. I thought that the whole technobabble thing didn't serve the plot at all. They already showed hyperspace tracking in EP IV, no need to reinvent the wheel. And what reason did they come to the conclusion of "hyperspace tracking tech"? They clearly don't trust their people enough to not have armed guards at the escape pods, why is a traitor so unconscionable?

On 12/8/2018 at 2:57 AM, DarthHammer said:

I was just pointing out that it is many orders of magnitude harder to replace experienced pilots than it is to replace materiel, even a large capital ship or similar investment.

Experienced pilots like some of those 215,000 crew on that Dreadnought? Numbers aside, pilots don't seem to be especially hard to come by (as kids growing up in Corellian slums, moisture farmers, and scavengers raising themselves on a hand to mouth existence on a desert world all are competent pilots).


I appreciate everyone's thoughtful responses here, and to thank y'all from not letting it descend into the giant cesspool that most TLJ conversations become. I think I may have been overestimating Poe's role in the Resistance (and hence level of strategic intelligence available to him), I was thinking he was the head of the Starfighter corps, whereas thinking about it he may just be the leader of Black squadron. Which also tracks his rank, so it makes more sense.

Were there other objectives that Resistance command wanted Cobalt squadron for? Undoubtedly. Was Poe briefed on them? Possibly not. Was it his call? Nope. But I still maintain my position that the tradeoff between the bombers and the dreadnought was the appropriate strategic decision, aligning with the overarching goals of the Resistance.

Lets be realistic here, there's a reason that asymmetric forces don't generally include strategic bomber squadrons. The cost of maintenance, and the risk over reward of attacks, and the logistics generally don't lend themselves to such forces. But hey! Space magic!!!

Thanks again folks! Happy to discuss it further if anyone cares to!

On 12/9/2018 at 7:47 PM, KRKappel said:

The bombers also have hyperdrives, they don't need to literally fly back to the capital ships and land. They can hit the first rendezvous and land then.

Pffffsh. You're saying that like the X-Wings and A-Wings didn't HAVE to land so they could be vaporized in one swift torpedo strike?

Also, if you keep on this line of thought you'll say something outlandish like "maybe they should have divided the crews evenly and sent the capital ships in 4 directions if only the lead ship is tracking them. Better to save 75% of the Resistance than rely on the sudden inability of Star Destroyers to detect starfighter sized ships..."

48 minutes ago, oneeyedmatt87 said:

Experienced pilots like some of those 215,000 crew on that Dreadnought? Numbers aside, pilots don't seem to be especially hard to come by (as kids growing up in Corellian slums, moisture farmers, and scavengers raising themselves on a hand to mouth existence on a desert world all are competent pilots).

Yeah, in the Star Wars galaxy, finding someone that can pilot a spacecraft is like looking for someone that can drive a passenger car in the United States today. Not everyone can do it, but it's a very common ability. That doesn't mean all of them are going to be ace combat pilots, but at least they have familiarity with the controls and a solid base to work from.

1 hour ago, oneeyedmatt87 said:

1. But the overarching plan of the Resistance is literally to gather the remaining forces of the Republic. Now, I know that may be "Classified", but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to draw conclusions about the broad overarching goals.
2. "Any losses they take are losses they can't really afford"... yet yesterday they were willing to commit multiple fighter squadrons to recover a portion of a map?
3. I am familiar with asymmetric warfare. However, I don't think Episode 9 is going to take place 50+ years in the future, considering it seems like the time gap between 7 and 8 is about 2-24 hours.
4. You may have misinterpreted my analogy to firetrucks. My point was that the ships (or something similar) are probably available on most remotely civilized worlds.

The New Republic demilitarized quite a bit, with the main republic navy installations being taken out alongside with Hosnian Prime there isn't that much left of it. And since the New Republic seemed to believe in a rather lighter hand than the Empire there is less garrisons that can be rallied.

Yesterday they had the backing of their supporters and were not in a life or death situation. Then those losses were losses they could afford, but things changed with Starkiller base. Losing that thing was a blow to the First Order, but the base did what it needed before it got destroyed.

Episode 9 is probably going to take place pretty close in time to the end of Episode 8. Although I do hope for a bit longer in between and a gracious off-screen exit for Leia rather than milking any extra shoots they have. But then again, asymmetric warfare is not very cinematic, that's why it doesn't really tend to get featured properly all that often. Unless is a tragic tale of some African civil war like Johnny Mad Dog and Beasts of no nation. But both of those still take place over a rather short time, couple of months to a year or two.

1 hour ago, Darth Revenant said:

The New Republic demilitarized quite a bit, with the main republic navy installations being taken out alongside with Hosnian Prime there isn't that much left of it. And since the New Republic seemed to believe in a rather lighter hand than the Empire there is less garrisons that can be rallied.

Yesterday they had the backing of their supporters and were not in a life or death situation. Then those losses were losses they could afford, but things changed with Starkiller base. Losing that thing was a blow to the First Order, but the base did what it needed before it got destroyed.

Episode 9 is probably going to take place pretty close in time to the end of Episode 8. Although I do hope for a bit longer in between and a gracious off-screen exit for Leia rather than milking any extra shoots they have. But then again, asymmetric warfare is not very cinematic, that's why it doesn't really tend to get featured properly all that often. Unless is a tragic tale of some African civil war like Johnny Mad Dog and Beasts of no nation. But both of those still take place over a rather short time, couple of months to a year or two.

"The New Republic demilitarized quite a bit"... true. But even that level is greater than the "small planetary defense force" size numbers we've seen the Resistance put up so far. Anything is better than nothing. And "Anything" still probably includes (at least) a few larger cruisers and a number of smaller frigates, all of which would have been at grave risk from that Dreadnought (again, assuming it was a relatively rare and expensive to the FO). Also, said capital ships would probably have included wings of starfighters and bombers, lessening the sting of losing Cobalt squadron.

Unless the main Republic Navy installations were based on Hosnian Prime (I know we saw a fleet destroyed, but rarely is a fleet stationed at its primary manufacturing and maintenance facilities), it's doubtful that they've all been destroyed.

I'll give you that they had more tactile support (if unofficial) before Starkiller Base, it's doubtful mid-to-long term that an attack like that would dissolve rather than weaken their support base. For history see "Pearl Harbor" or "9/11" If anything, the reports of the destruction of Starkiller base, along with the destruction of a dreadnought, would bolster support in the worlds (formerly) of the Republic.

That was basically my point for the timing Ep 9. Nobody wants to see a 70 year old Poe, Rey, and Finn finally defeat the FO. It may not be realistic, but it's definitely better cinema to keep it shorter. I'm definitely with you. I hope (and indeed, wish they did) take the "longer approach between films" as they did with the other trilogies. It allowed character growth between the episodes that we just didn't see between 7 and 8.

It's been a while, but within weeks of seeing TLJ I fashioned an outline for EP 9 that took the mess dished out by EP 7 & 8 and put together a cool story that would salvage the mess and wrap up everything with a satisfying and fun finale.

Everyone I describe the story elements too have agreed that it would be a VERY cool send off. Might even save the franchise along with Daisy Ridley's acting career. (Actually looking at IMDB she seems to be doing fine. Apparently she got a voice acting gig in the Peter Rabbit CGI cartoon).

One of the hardest things to do in life is to watch someone else do a job poorly that you KNOW that you can do better.

Just now, Mark Caliber said:

It's been a while, but within weeks of seeing TLJ I fashioned an outline for EP 9 that took the mess dished out by EP 7 & 8 and put together a cool story that would salvage the mess and wrap up everything with a satisfying and fun finale.

I'm looking forward to the impact on the First Order of being led by a powerful, impulsive leader, who doesn't plan and just reacts. I'm guessing we'll see rather a lot of defections, or a major split and civil war in the First Order.

I'm not going to see EP IX. My original plan was to skip EP 8 but family convinced me to spend an afternoon in the cinema. What a mistake.

But I won't be making that mistake again.

I hope for IX and if my minions tell me it's worth it I will see it. Mostly I want the 'trilogy' to wrap up and be done. It's funny but Disney says they've put their anthologies on hold, and I find the anthologies were far more creative and decent than the 'trilogy'.

1 hour ago, Mark Caliber said:

One of the hardest things to do in life is to watch someone else do a job poorly that you KNOW that you can do better.

So why aren't you making millions writing & selling scripts?

2 hours ago, Mark Caliber said:

I'm not going to see EP IX. My original plan was to skip EP 8 but family convinced me to spend an afternoon in the cinema. What a mistake.

But I won't be making that mistake again.

All was as I foresaw it... James found the pain, and you as well!

Haven't read the thread, so forgive me if these points have been raised:

The time and cost of replacing the bombers and their crews is irrelevant, since at the moment, the Resistance has zero capability to replace any lost materiel. Their only chance at this point in time is to escape the First Order with as much as they can, to start up a true Resistance/Rebellion and eventually defeat them. Leia knows firsthand how difficult it was for the Rebel Alliance to get going, get built, get ships and guns and people willing to fly them and shoot them. Every loss the Resistance takes is effectively irreplaceable at this moment. Before this film, the Resistance was getting their equipment under-the-table from the New Republic, and according to the opening crawl, the New Republic effectively no longer exists.

At the time of Poe's attack, Leia had no reason to believe the Dreadnought was any threat to them once they entered hyperspace. Yes, we know the First Order could track them, and the Dreadnought arriving behind them five minutes later would have ended the movie immediately, but they didn't know that. Poe insisting "we can't let it get away" is him comically missing the point: the Dreadnought isn't trying to "get away," the Resistance is. And the Dreadnought very nearly fired its big, honkin space guns at the Resistance fleet before it was destroyed. If that bomber had been a few seconds later, if it had been destroyed along with the others, the Resistance fleet would have burned then and there. If Poe and his squad had pulled back when Leia ordered them to, they might have all made it out before the Dreadnought could fire on them.

The calculations for replacing personnel and materiel only work if both sides have relatively equal ability to replace losses. Clearly, the First Order has vastly superior construction and recruiting programs, considering the massive (granted, not remotely competent, even by Star Wars standards, but massive) military they have to work with. No one expected the First Order to be such a threat, or Leia's Resistance would have been far better equipped. The New Republic certainly didn't expect them to have a weapon like Starkiller Base. And Starkiller may have only gotten off one shot, but what a shot it was. Broke the back of the New Republic, and it's pretty clearly shown that the First Order retreated from Starkiller in good order, letting them capitalize on their gains quickly. The Resistance simply can't afford to waste lives and ships on targets that aren't of absolutely critical importance, which the Dreadnought was not.

The difference between losing the bomber wing against the Dreadnought and, say, losing almost everything at the Battle of Scarif is that Scarif earned them intel on the Death Star, which eventually allowed them to defeat it. The Rebellion simply couldn't afford to let the Empire have that weapon unchallenged, and even then, most of the Alliance leadership was against committing to that battle. The First Order almost certainly has more Dreadnoughts, it's not a target whose presence or absence will win or lose the entire war.

Are there officials infos somewhere that the First Order has more Dreadnought than the one destroyed in ep9 ? The same question about the FO massive military could be made. In both ep 7 &8 the FO shows a lot of military strengths. Then everybody assumes that if it shows so much military power it's because the FO has much more in reserve. But it could as much be the exact opposite. The FO uses all the military strengths it can to get a decisive advantage and wins before its adversary can regroup and strike back.

Personally from what I've seen in both ep 7 & 8, I think the FO is not as strong as it wants the rest of the galaxy to believe. And that its only chance to beat the Republic is a quick decisive strike with all the military might it can muster. The Star Wars take on the 'Shock and Awe'.

10 hours ago, Stan Fresh said:

So why aren't you making millions writing & selling scripts?

250,000 unsolicited screenplays hit Hollywood every year . . . Sure that sounds like pretty long odds, but I was confident that I could be successful.

I actually did put in a yeoman's effort to getting a great project produced, but it was one of the countless projects to never get past pre-production. IIRC for every 1 project that get's completed there are 300 that don't. My project was just another one of those 300.

Also scripts are what you use to make plays. Screenplays are used for making movies.

But I think the sad reality was that I just got tired driving myself into dead ends and getting no where and I eventually just gave up.

Not to worry. I still have several years ahead of me and though I won't be a the successful Writer/Producer/Director that I once sought to be, I've done other awesome and exciting accomplishments and I no doubt will continue to do great things in other areas.

So you think you can do better than the successfully employed people because you tried once and didn't make it. Huh. Okay.

10 hours ago, Mark Caliber said:

Also scripts are what you use to make plays. Screenplays are used for making movies. 

They're all scripts. For an example, look here:

https://johnaugust.com/library

22 hours ago, Mark Caliber said:

It's been a while, but within weeks of seeing TLJ I fashioned an outline for EP 9 that took the mess dished out by EP 7 & 8 and put together a cool story that would salvage the mess and wrap up everything with a satisfying and fun finale.

Everyone I describe the story elements too have agreed that it would be a VERY cool send off. Might even save the franchise along with Daisy Ridley's acting career. (Actually looking at IMDB she seems to be doing fine. Apparently she got a voice acting gig in the Peter Rabbit CGI cartoon).

One of the hardest things to do in life is to watch someone else do a job poorly that you KNOW that you can do better.

5 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

So you think you can do better than the successfully employed people because you tried once and didn't make it. Huh. Okay.

They're all scripts. For an example, look here:

https://johnaugust.com/library

I don't know anything about screenplays or scripts (apart from I can form a personal opinion on if they're good or bad) but could you please take this argument to another thread or to PM? Personal attacks don't have a place on this thread, unless you're the Resistance Bombers personally attacking the FO dreadnought...

29 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

So you think you can do better than the successfully employed people because you tried once and didn't make it. Huh. Okay.

They're all scripts. For an example, look here:

https://johnaugust.com/library

Nope. I know that I can do better because I've taken my training seriously and I've worked enough "free" creative projects to know that I actually am better.

Wow Mark, you really are chock full of yourself, aren't you?

One failed crack at a project, and suddenly you're better than any other scriptwriter that's actually been hired to write for Lucasfilm for produced Star Wars movies? ****, I don't think even HappyDaze has that much self-conceited superiority.

Of course, since Lucasfilm has zero problem with folks doing Star Wars fan films (provided the makers don't profit from them), you can certainly put your money where your mouth is and produce your own Star Wars fan film to demonstrate just how allegedly superior your script-writing abilities are to the so-called "hacks" that are currently working on the Star Wars media.

3 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

****, I don't think even HappyDaze has that much self-conceited superiority.

Donovan, you continue to underestimate me. How predictable.

Whilst I may find it arrogant to consider oneself better than others due to my upbringing, I must also point out that success at an endeavour has a major luck component which means that success = superior skill is a highly weak proposition in any case where judgement is involved.

On 12/11/2018 at 2:50 AM, oneeyedmatt87 said:

I'll give you that they had more tactile support (if unofficial) before Starkiller Base, it's doubtful mid-to-long term that an attack like that would dissolve rather than weaken their support base. For history see "Pearl Harbor" or "9/11" If anything, the reports of the destruction of Starkiller base, along with the destruction of a dreadnought, would bolster support in the worlds (formerly) of the Republic.

This is just more proof for my theory that Leia’s Republic is really nothing more than a handful of backwater planets that the rest (and majority) of the former Republic/Empire doesn’t care about.

Galactic Republics make little sense in the first place, and the disolving of the Empire would’ve been a perfect excuse for most planets to just take care of themselves and not participate in any sort of mass galactic (re)unification.

The new trilogy becomes a lot more fun when you look at it as if each side consists of just two galactic extemist minority groups fighting it out in a quadrant of the galaxy that when mentioned causes other planetary citizens to roll their eyes and laugh. That’s why it was so easy to destroy the Republic’s fleet, and the First Order just has power in numbers relative to this tiny alliance of nowhere planets.

Those sourcebooks touting the amount of forces the First Order has? Just lies and propaganda that break the fourth wall. I mean look at who they’ve gotten to fill their stormtrooper ranks compared to the Empire. There’s a shiny WOMAN in charge for goodness sake. Can you imagine Palpatine and his sexist/racist ways allowing any of that? No, but the First Order needs the “real” numbers filled out. And the reason Star Killer base was built in a planet was because the First Order couldn’t afford to build their own moon sized death ray, but they came across all this old planetary mining equipment on the cheap...

The evidence that this new trilogy conflict is a joke to the rest of the galaxy is starting to really build up.

9 minutes ago, Flavorabledeez said:

Can you imagine Palpatine and his sexist/racist ways allowing any of that?

Yeah, cause he wasn't either of those things.