The Imperial War Room

[ElladanKenet]

well, that's her.... she's a Star Wars wannabe really, but it's not my place to judge  

[Sol Walker]

She better learn this stuff fast.
Or the Resident Sith might hunt her down for practice.  

[ElladanKenet]

Feh, Sith... that'd be fun. One of many fun plot twists...  

[Sol Walker]

You laugh at them now, but Ferno's no joke.
He's crazy on a Hanibal Lector scale.  

[ElladanKenet]

I wasn't laughing...  

[Seriph von Destris]

......ok? sweatdrop  

[Seriph von Destris]

Imperial Naval Tactics

*Boarding is not a useful combat tactic, and only occurs after the target vessel has already been disabled (as seen in ANH), or has already surrendered.

*Ramming is not a useful combat tactic, and is never used or even attempted in any of the canon films. Three ISD's accidentally rammed the Executor while decelerating from hyperspace (ref: SWE), but they merely exploded against its shields. Official literature describes "robot ramships", but these weapons (essentially huge guided missiles) are designed for deceit and piracy rather than wholesale warfare, and were used once in battle, against a light cruiser.

*Battle lines are not used. Fleets travel in formation which break up when combat is joined, as seen in ROTJ. The Rebel and Imperial fleets began exchanging long-range fire without any regard for formation, although Emperor Palpatine's decisions ultimately led to an Imperial defeat despite what was probably superior firepower. Piett's ships engaged long-range fire with the Rebel fleet as described in the ROTJ novelization, but they apparently targeted smaller ships before larger ships for the purpose of prolonging Palpatine's dramatic demonstration. Even Jerjerrod chose his targets in the same manner, aiming the first superlaser blast at the Liberty rather than the far more massive and heavily armed Rebel flagship Home One. On the other hand, Ackbar wisely concentrated his fleet's firepower on the Imperial flagship Executor first..

*Tactics of maneuver are non-existent. Capital ships simply exchange fire with enemy capital ships, without regard for formations or "flanking", "encirclement", or "breakthrough" maneuvers.

*Torpedoes are not used in capital ship combat. Despite apocryphal descriptions to the contrary, there are no canon sightings or descriptions of any capship missiles. Capital ship combat seems to be conducted exclusively with turbolasers, which isn't surprising given the lack of damage caused by proton torpedoes in ANH (Red Leader's torpedoes barely scratched the DS exhaust port surface structure) and TPM (Naboo torpedoes were ineffective against the TradeFed battleship).

*Fighters exist but they are incapable of carrying the fight to the enemy unaided, so a fighter attack can only complement the big guns, rather than replacing them. This was seen most strikingly in the beginning stages of the Battle of Endor, when hordes of Imperial fighters and bombers attacked without support and swarmed over the Rebel fleet, but were unable to destroy or seriously damage a single warship. It was seen again in TPM, when the Naboo fighter squadron fought a hopeless battle to destroy a TradeFed battleship (a battle that Qui-Gon obviously expected them to lose) despite having the element of surprise (the battleship didn't launch its own fighters until the attackers were already within naked-eye visual range).

*Combat can occur at very long visual ranges (made longer by the sheer size of Imperial warships, which makes them easier to see at a distance), as seen in TESB when the Rebel ground defenses engaged Imperial ships in orbit. It was seen again in ROTJ when Rebel and Imperial warships exchanged fire at long visual range and then closed to less than 10 km ("point-blank range") as the battle intensified.

Again, some might counter these arguments with technobabble theory, but again, what you see is what you get. They have fighters, but they can't use them the way terrestrial navies used them. They have torpedoes, but as anyone can see from ROTJ and TPM, they're obviously not ship-killers the way they were for submarines. They have guided missiles, but those missiles didn't turn space combat into long-range affairs of duelling missile platforms, the way they did for terrestrial navies and aircraft. It's not enough to affix a label to a particular weapon and assume it's precisely analogous to terrestrial equivalents; you must look at the way it's used, before you can begin to guess what it can do.

 

[Nelowulf]

Cale Darksun

You laugh at them now, but Ferno's no joke.
He's crazy on a Hanibal Lector scale.

Thanks cale, but I think Drako would suit that a wee bit better. Homicidal, yes. Psychopatic, perhaps. But crazy? not really.

Of course, when you're in stasis for over 70 years, and fully consious throughout it due to a mistake in the force, what's to become of your brain but demensia?  

[Nina Halford]

Nah. Ferno has some semblance of sanity in comparison to Drako.

Now, he was just plain bent! eek  

[Seriph von Destris]

Imperial Campaign Plan When fighting Star Fleet (star trek)

*Phase 1: Secure beach head: Assemble a small fleet dedicated to this operation. Given the fact that private corporations can build fleets of thousands of warships (see the Trade Federation's globe-encircling blockade fleet in TPM), and the fact that we were able to build 60% of DS2 in just six months, it seems self-evident that we could easily construct a fleet of several thousand star destroyers in a few months. However, such a large force is probably not warranted in this case, and an insignificant diversion of 100 Star Destroyers from existing sector fleets would be more than adequate. We could deploy these ships (along with necessary support and fighter craft) as well as several Golan Arms battle stations to the beach head without significant effects on our domestic battle readiness. Such forces could easily be deployed in as little as 48 hours.

This 100-ship fleet, as insigificant as it may be to a galactic Empire (by volume, it is smaller than a single Executor-class vessel), would nonetheless represent the largest single battle force to ever appear in the Federation's territory by a significant margin. Remember that the Federation includes vessels such as fighters, shuttles, and runabouts in its ship counts, and that each Star Destroyer carries 72 fighters and/or shuttles and gunships, so a fleet of 100 Star Destroyers would carry 7200 light vessels. In other words, using Federation assessment methods, this would be a 7300-ship fleet.

Once the beach head is secured, we will have a task force in enemy space with a supply line passing through the wormhole into our space. Strategically placed battle stations or mines could be used to prevent unauthorized incursions into our territory, although it should be noted that given their slow propulsion technology and our highly dispersed civilization, an enemy vessel could enter our space and spend years or decades in transit before encountering an inhabited system, never mind one that is strategically valuable.

*Phase 2: Disperse enemy forces: Keep half the fleet stationed at the wormhole, and use the other half to besiege small, remote Federation outposts, colonies, and bases, while permitting them to broadcast distress calls. This will force the enemy to choose between the following:

Maintain strong core defense fleets and ignore the distress calls. This will politically destabilize the Federation, as outlying member systems will lose their faith in the protection of the Federation. We can expect multiple planetary secessions and surrenders in this event.

Send ships to besieged outposts. This will have the effect of dispersing their forces over their entire territory. We can easily redeploy ships from any point in their territory to any other point in their territory in mere hours because of the speed of hyperdrive, but trips to outlying sectors will take their warp-driven starships weeks or months. Such dispersal would leave their core defense fleets severely weakened.

We expect that the "soft targets", small scale, and low casualty count of this operation will be misinterpreted by Federation policitians as an Imperial reluctance to engage in a full-scale war. It is our hope that they will foolishly attempt to pursue diplomatic negotiations as a result. The timetable for this phase is 1 week. If they choose to disperse their forces, this will provide time for their ships to travel beyond direct transmission range of their home bases. If they choose to maintain their core fleets, this will provide time for negative political repercussions to develop.

A secondary benefit of this operation will be to enhance our intelligence gathering, since the lightly defended colonies may potentially be a rich source of strategic data, technology samples, captives for questioning, etc.

*Phase 3: Cut their communications: Deploy a small group of 500 hyperdrive-equipped fighters, shuttles, or gunships to destroy critical sections of their subspace relay network. This network is extremely vulnerable to attack for two reasons:

The relay stations are mostly undefended, thus making them vulnerable to any vessel which carries weapons.

The small number of defended stations are found in territories which border with local antagonist parties such as the Romulans and Cardassians. They have never anticipated an attack upon the relay stations deep in their own territory, since none of their enemies ever had the speed or numbers to mount thousands of simultaneous, crippling strikes on the relay stations deep in their territory. Until now.

It is impractical to hold up the entire campaign until the relay network is mostly or completely destroyed, but we can surgically "slice" sections out of it which will cripple its effectiveness and isolate entire sectors from one another. This bulk of this operation can be conducted within 6 hours, after which we expect that their communications will be so severely impacted that their wide-area command and control network will be effectively incapacitated. Phase 4 would commence at that time, although the destruction of Federation subspace relays would remain an ongoing, independent operation.

*Phase 4: Pre-emptive first strike: Redeploy the ships from phase 2 into a mobile marauder force, still composed of the same 50 capital ships and their attached fighter group of 3600 ships (remember that with long-range communications cut, the Federation has no way of knowing that these ships are not still besieging their remote colonies, and phase 2 was only a diversion anyway). Use this marauder force to move through enemy territory and attack critical strategic installations in force. The Federation's enemies have historically attacked in piecemeal fashion, with small-scale attacks on outlying installations such as DS9, or harmless "Doolittle" attacks upon important installations (such as the symbolic but ineffective Breen attack on Federation HQ). This is partially due to the weak propulsion technology of their enemies: the Federation can usually detect inbound attackers in time to intercept them en route to a deep target. However, their ships are far too slow to intercept our forces en route, even if they can detect them. Therefore, we will use our superior mobility to conduct hit and run attacks upon the following, in order:

Their military leadership: Destroy Starfleet HQ and its immediate surroundings with orbital bombardment.

Logistical support facilities: Destroy starbases, antimatter supply depots, and starship refueling facilities.

Industrial facilities: Destroy shipyards, manufacturing facilities, material refineries, and critical mining colonies.

It may not be necessary to use hit and run tactics, since preliminary intelligence reports indicate that Federation ship weapons are extremely weak relative to our own1, and that their primary weapons may not even penetrate our unshielded hulls2. However, we should be prudent, and plan the campaign in such a manner that its success is not dependent upon the accuracy of this intelligence data. Naturally, if we determine upon initial contact that the intelligence data is correct, we can employ even more conservative numbers of ships and pull back most of our forces, as a handful of Star Destroyers would be sufficient.

In either case, this operation can be conducted over a two week period, although the timetable for this phase of the operation is flexible and is subject to change. While we would obviously prefer to capture their star systems intact, it is always possible that they will refuse to capitulate even after witnessing our superiority. If this is the case, and this phase of the campaign continues until the point that their military-industrial infrastructure is completely destroyed, we will progress to phase 5.

*Phase 5: Land invasion: The Federation has seen fit to concentrate virtually its entire military into its Starfleet. Even its ground troops (as seen in Siege of AR-58 cool are part of Starfleet rather than a separate branch of its military. Most planets (even Earth, its capital) are completely demilitarized, and any troop deployments would come from orbiting starships (as seen in “Paradise Lost”). Its ground forces are pitifully inadequate to resist full scale invasions, and there seem to be no standing armies or militias of any kind. Given our tactical superiority in infantry armament and equipment, mobile armour (including war droids), and artillery, it should be quite easy to conquer key systems such as Earth and Vulcan (in which the bulk of their government and military/industrial/scientific resources seems to reside) through conventional invasion, without sustaining heavy casualties.

*Phase 5 alternate: Terror campaign: If ground troops are unavailable for some reason, or the Emperor wishes to use the Federation as an example to its neighbours, we may elect to use orbital bombardment or superweapons (if available) to destroy or depopulate prominent, heavily populated planets in enemy territory one by one, until enemy capitulation occurs. It seems that the Federation has never suffered the total depopulation of a heavily populated world. They have lost colonies and outposts, but they have never witnessed the total elimination of tens or hundreds of billions of citizens. We expect that the Federation's political leadership will not have the political will to soldier on in the face of such losses, and that they would be subject to enormous political pressure from within.

*Phase 6: Consolidation: After securing the Federation's surrender, we can consolidate our gains with the following operations:

Deploy sensor probe networks and long-range communications relay networks (it may be possible to refit remaining portions of their existing networks to Imperial standards, but if not, we may have to construct such networks ourselves).

Construct military bases, supply depots, and industrial facilities (again, it may be possible to refit existing facilities, if they capitulate before they are all destroyed).

Initiate cultural normalization programs such as settlement and intermingling, economic recovery programs, and propaganda/entertainment broadcasts. The Federation will be far easier to integrate into Imperial society than its non-human neighbours, due to the fact that despite its political and species-inclusive rhetoric, it is already a highly centralized, conformist society in which the military and the civilian government are virtually indistinguishable and in which virtually all power rests in human  

[Loki the Stampede]

Anzle walks in.
"Yeah... I am a Mandalorian who turned his back on his culture, but has a heart, and yada, yada, yada. But, for now, he is just going to be a badass heartless Bounty Hunter..."

Aksel walks in.
"I AM ALL POWERFUL! I WILL CRUSH ANY JEDI! THE SITH ORDER IS SUPREME!"
Stands looking around for a bit, and kicks a rock.
"I... like... power..." twisted

And yeah, that sums up my characters. No real set agenda, except messing up other people's.  

[AFK Masturbating]

Freya: We're, like, totally going to bring democracy back, just like my ancestors fought for. And I so totally won't stop until Fel and Krayt lick my boots and call me "Queen"! And, when I find the mega-barve that iced my old man, he's soooo totally going to get it ... I don't care what those Imp liars say! *flips off a statue of Fel*

Gunther: I shall aid the Jedi, as well as my sister's noble cause in whatever way I can.

Iria: Fel created me as a weapon, but all I really want out of life is peace, and to play the piano. And, I miss my mommy! *sniffle!* ;__;

Shall I toss in me NPCs, as well? xd  

[Nelowulf]

Ferno: *Force Slaps everyone in the room*

HM: Meatbags are all the same. They're just food for my master. The only reason he won't interact wiht anyone except link is because he'd kill them in half a heartbeat. And that's after he took 90% of that time to sigh.

Ferno: *nods*  

[Loki the Stampede]

Aksel glares past HM towards to Ferno.

Anzle smokes a Spicestick.
"Droids got a point... your all nuts..."

((This gives me an idea...))  

[Nelowulf]

Ferno: *looks at Aksel*

HM: The sith goes first.

Ferno: *performs the kiss of death on Aksel, before he can react*

HM: That's what you get when you can't tell the difference between a hologram and the real thing.