R2-Opus2

lol I know what you mean, but it is fun

The reason I did not "take away" the Ys and Bs on the Reb side is because we saw some "in flight". To my knowledge, we did not see one TIE Bomber deployed at Endor (if I'm wrong, someone please provide a screenshot if you have one, and if there is one seen, then you could apply that + to the Imps' deployments). To me it is a non issue how effective they were at dogfighting, although to be fair, some probably had to dogfight because there were no other options at the time. I do agree too that where possible, their "primary targets" were larger ships when they got coverage to make attack runs, though given the magnitude of this particular battle, to destroy a superweapon, reb tactics at the point of the point blank strategy probably became more "balls to the walls" so to speak with some battle conventions as we know them, thrown out the proverbial airlock (one way to explain why sometimes you see flights of Ys or Bs unescorted). As for my numbers, I too was largely just trying to go by known stuff at the party using pics. Like I said, there probably was a few more SDs or even a few more Mon Cals not seen. Its said in a few places for instance that the Rebs employed approximately 12 Mon Cal cruisers, but I find that a bit far fetched...I need evidence heh. The one thing I think you might be overlooking in your analysis is, at what point would those numbers change, the moment the DS II went up and the Executor bit the dust. Desertions, stranded craft, and fleeing forces on that end of things I feel must be taken into account. During battle, some were challenging the cap ships (Wedge chasing Interceptors going after the medical frigate for instance...where's the bloody TBs? heh), some going after fighters, others chasing the DS groups. Where ships are in the arena are just as important too how effective they are when not concentrated as we saw at the outset. The more spread out, the less effective they may become, but that's true of both sides though I never got the sense the Rebels were unfocused or disoriented apart from losing those two cruisers to the laser). The way you have it, that implies again that the Empire could have crushed the Rebels, and I'm not disputing that possibility. Only addressing actual deployments based upon the Emperor's "plan" of using the superlaser. A fraction of those forces in the beginning had to have been either held back closer to their fleet, or still onboard thinking they would not need them. And while its clear bombers should be primary if not secondary targets for the Imps, they didn't widdle them away like that, so maybe the few dozen or so surviors you've got listed would be more of a "mixed bag" (being generous again in terms of any veteran pilots in each craft type). Had they all been deployed, I think you'd be closer to dead on statistically speaking. The longer the shield stayed up too, the more the Rebels might have been minced meat further slanting those calcs even after going point blank. I am also favoring the Rebs, but I'm trying to get a handle on why from a statistics/command/logisitical point of view, rather than applying the mystical Force stuff yet. That stuff comes in more like at the eve of battle.

Sorry Scath, my bad, I was referring a little more towards what Jahlad wrote in his last post. And your right, you do want to space out those messages a little. You want to reach that balance of frequency of the messages with allowing the fellow time to look into things. I don't know what frequency your going with atm, but I suspect 2-3 a month isn't too bad. Its enough for the guy to have us in the back of his mind yet it isn't like we're hounding him to death or anything making him wanna thing twice about interacting heh

The only methods I've seen, and I'm not sure I'm totally accurate on this, about preknowledge of fleets...On worlds where I might have a Jedi or something, sometimes I get some preknowledge of a fleet approaching, but many times its something I overlook if I have a lot going on. Most other ways I think are espionage to find those things out. I suppose one way to cut down "preknowledge" to some extent is to alter the abilities of your espionage specops. By limiting them that forces you to rely on your 30 characters only You could also probably lower the attributes of your probe/recon specops. The one area I don't think you can do anything about though is the diplomatic states that sometimes give you info...If a world isn't all the way in your favor, info will leak out from time to time even if you have no specops or characters running missions to 'em. However usually I leave things as is for the most part, instead relying on having some fast fleets, and some slow ones with more punch. The reason I think that your running into trouble if your playing lots of multiplayer is that chances are, everybody uses fast fleets for just such a reason as you sited, trapping the enemy. When your playing against a player and they've gotten their interdictors, odds are unlike going up against the AI, they'll have more than one in their fleets. With just AI, you only need enough fighters to keep your fleet alive long enough to knock out their interdictor no matter the size of the enemy. Even if they have a juicy target that has characters onboard, I usually hit the interdictor(s) before anything else and assess things after that point.

I guess that one white haired geezer bought it on the first DS as none of those pics resembles him.

I thought this picture might help some in regards to the Empire's possible total number of fighter squads available to it (well, assigned to them...deployments into the field are a different story). http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/given/at/headon-at.jpg If that is indeed everything they have plus the Death Star, the ratios are still in the Imp's favor. 15 Destroyers plus the Executor is not too shabby. In fact I agree that its overkill, however again, I very much doubt those assets were used to their full potential because of the Emperor. 12 fighers per squad times 6 squads each = 72 per ISD 72 fighters per ISD times 15 (pictured) = 1080 Then there's the 144 fighters reported to be on Executor = 1224 total for the starfleet there. With the DS II, all I could find on it so far is taken from the Movie Trilogy Sourcebook. While it lists its other weaponry, it does not list its fighter detatchments if any, although apparently its crews for its starship support and other ships appears to have been assigned, both of those groups are well into the several hundred thousand (or maybe it is just what its capacity for those crews *will* be after completion, dunno). Given that this DS is larger than the first, the closest approximation for its number of fighter wings could be extrapolated to be slightly less than the 100 TIE wings listed to have been on the first DS (from the DS technical manual). When completed the DS II probably holds much more but I'm still in the dark about whether the DS II had any fighters assigned to it that did go into battle. The big procession of fighters upon the Emperor's arrival might be with the Death Star, but I haven't heard anything conclusive about that. Had the DS managed to squeeze in its full complement (or at least approaching that of the original DS), that's 7200+ at their disposal. More than enough still even if it is just a small fraction of that number...even still if we assume none of the TIE Bombers or recon fighters were deployed. Each wing typically had at least 1 TIE Bomber squadron (p. 29 Star Wars Sourcebook 2nd ed.)...4 TIE (1 recon), 1 TIE Interceptor squadron, 1 TIE Bomber squadron. So lets try weeding those bombers and recons out as non-combatants to get a better sense of things... Of Executor's total complement, that still leaves 96 at their disposal 15 ISDs minus bombers/recons = 720 Total: 816 (TIEs & Interceptors only) DS II (assuming complement before completion is close to first DS) = 4800 (TIEs & Ints only) Course, if someone knows the exact percentage of completion of the Death Star II (or there's a spec sheet on it I don't have), you could better extrapolate the fighter complement. With the Rebs totals, more allowances would have to be made to up their numbers a little apart from the known flights I sighted. For example, an assumption from the commentaries on theforce.net that one of the Mon Cal cruisers destroyed had elements resembling that of Home One. If it could resemble it in some respects, maybe it can resemble it in others i.e. overall scale & its fighter capcity can likewise resemble it which would yield another 8-10 squadrons. As for the other Mon Cal cruisers, including the two winged ones (one destroyed was Liberty), even if we surmise that there are no less than 6 squadrons on each (one wing apiece), it still falls short of what the Empire could have brought to bear. Unlike the Empire, if the Rebs employed recons along with their bomber groups, they probably threw those recons out to play. http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/given/battle3.jpg Looking at that picture again we see the three "anonymous wingless" variants along with what looks like Home One to the right. Liberty and the other winged cruiser is not visible, but we do see the Nebulon-Bs (6 total if those "Is" facing us are two more retreating Nebs). I'll go over my list of "known" groups, then factor in those general assumptions about the others... Known Fighter Compliments: 5 Nebs - 2 squads each (6th Neb was medical) = 120 Home One - 10 squadrons (assumes they "reloaded" before leaving for Endor) = 120 Total: 240...This is more than enough to take on Executor's entire compliment alone (however given that we see a larger number of TIEs at the outset of battle, one or more of the 15 ISDs and/or the DS II must have deployed a supplementary squadron or three but by how many squadrons is unclear). Generous Assumptions about the Rebs: Using the same picture above plus the unpictured winged cruisers... 3 "anonymous" cruisers - (6 squads at 72 fighters each) = 216 2 "winged" cruisers - same minimum calculation = 144 4th "annoymous" cruiser (another shot shows 4 somewhere) assumed to have same loadout as Home One = 120 Total: 504 for that group, 720 overall + 8-12 hanging out with the Falcon so perhaps 732. This is all before knowing how many Mon Cal cruisers total there were (not pictured), otherwise you could also apply the minimum 1 wing variable to them. Even so, it falls short of the Imp totals. If any other aspect of the battle tipped the scales to the Rebs, I still believe there must have been more that hypered in separately as the group with the Falcon did.

Come to think of it Zaarin might be a great choice for a card, but I suppose he'd have to have a loyalty of 0 and traitors turned on in Rebed That one picture isn't too bad, but you might have to use some wizardry to cut out the back of that other dude's head.

Your right those couple of links are broken, but I found one in another section. This one is of the traitor Zaarin from the TIE Fighter game... http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/cg/tie/Zaarin.gif I suspect one of the broken links is a picture of the old guy sitting down the way next to Motti's side of the conference table on the first Death Star. He appears to be wearing the white uniform of a Grand Admiral. I don't think much else was documented in the novels about who any of the others were besides Thrawn.

This was why I examined those pictures, I can't be for certain exactly how many cap ships, let alone starfighters the Rebels could bring to bear. There's other unknowns too I'm sure in those equations as I mentioned such as what total #s were influenced by any fighters that might have been down for maintenance or otherwise unable to be deployed. But it is true by the visual evidence in my opinion that the Empire looked to have more fighters deployed at the beginning of the engagement. There is also the matter of equipment. In the X-Wing and TIE games, some of the Empire's notable fighter types, including the standard TIE could be outfitted with concussion missile launchers...now whether any of them had these at that battle, I don't know. Same goes for the A-Wings, they're known to have those (up to 16 if I remember correctly - 8 per launcher). Also from what I remember from those games, sometimes if you planned it right, you could actually get in some collateral damage to an enemy fighter or two (plus the one your aiming for) at a distance with those missiles, most especially if the enemy ships are arranged in flights that are closely packed (as we do see in the movie at the outset of battle). Think of the confusion sowed when those formations get disrupted like that. Plus the Bs and Ys have ion cannons...while techinically not the best suited for dogfights, I wouldn't be surprised that any ended up in furballs where they could use them. A disabled TIE is one less TIE on yer tail after all. They didn't necessarily have to go for the kill as I'm sure the Imps were. Obviously its questionable to me that each fighter was in fact outfitted with what it was designed to employ (right now I'd reckon that at least the X's and B's were definitely as evidenced in seeing a flight of Bs with an SD exploding in the background + the evidence of Wedge's fighter firing torps at the generator) let alone if all fighter complements in the arena on both sides were flight ready. I think before we could nail down any concrete numbers, we'd have to know first of all what "class" those obsure Mon Cal ships were. Like I mentioned for the Rebs, the only real certainties in my mind as to known amount of fighters at this point is how many Home One carries (10) and 5 of the 6 Neb Bs (2 each for another total of 10 - one frigate was modified to be medical so they didn't have any) going by that one photo alone (it wouldn't surprise me if there were additional ships not pictured). So I'd say its probably 20 known on those ships + the group of craft flying with the Falcon (being generous here, this assumes Home One maxed its hanger space after the Falcon deployed & before leaving for Endor). With the Imps its different, I don't think they had a ship smaller than a Class I Imperial Star Destroyer plus the Executor at Endor so I think it'd be easier to estimate their fighters, although its unclear to me if the Death Star had any active fighter detachements assigned to it or not. For me that's one of their only unknowns (besides how many present were flight ready among their ships). There's one other factor to that math in my opinion too, and that is at the moment of the point blank attack strategy when the Imps began to lose a few ships whether those fighters berthed in them were engaged or went down with the ship, and once that happened, how may TIE pilots if any deserted. I know we see plenty of TIEs zipping around, but I'd reckon its doubtful given the "Emperor's surprise" of using the superlaser, that I bet those Imp ship captains didn't bring everything they had to bear that they could, overconfident that what they had in the field could do the job (I don't know about anyone else, but I don't recall seeing one TIE Bomber for instance attempting attack runs on those Rebel cruisers...perhaps the point blank strategy of the Rebs made doing so dangerous being so close to their own ships *shrug*). For the rebs its not just what their cap ships could hold, but in addition how many fighters hypered in separately like the group with the Falcon. There could concievably be more fighters than the maximums those ships could harbor.

While some of you who are geekier than me at keeping up with this stuff prolly know this already, I've found that Norton's Ghost program invaluable. I only need to use it once, but I expect I'll use it again when the time comes. Its great. Once you've got your system up and running where you like it (after downloading and installing all that pesky windows garbage, then getting your supplemental cool stuff on there like RebEd), you basically just make a burned copy of that setup on cd...better than a bootdisk. The main downside however is, if you made any serious hardware alterations to your system or software fairly frequently, that's when its time to make a new ghost of that hard drive. My old one is already a coaster

I don't know if this is even remotely accurate, but I have the feeling that a good many of the recruits into the Empire didn't all just come from clones. I think stormtroopers are a special breed, in that, they comprise the bulk of the clone forces. But lemme get to my theory on the pilots... I don't know again if I heard this from an EU source or some other fan brainstorm site, but I've tended to agree that pilots and other fleet personel (not necessarily officers here) were conscripts. One argument for this supposition at least in my view, is the fighter craft...No hyperdrives on them keeps the pilots' incentive to survive to fight another day. They have no other choice like you say if they fail to protect the cap ship that brought them. Their survival is directly linked to their dependency on those cap ships. Its also one way to enforce loyalty and I can easily understand Palpy using that angle. It makes it hard also for fighter pilots to defect individually. If they were clones, the Emperor would've had no trouble having more hyperdrive capable fighter craft. As we know from ATOCs, it is possible to genetically make them fiercely loyal. By the same token it is long process to make those clones in the first place (presumably at least 10 years to get fully mature ones trained and ready if the gap between Phantom Menace and the last film is any way to measure). So on one hand you've got a huge expense in making clones, one to make "quality" starfighters, and yet one more for a quality fleet (all this before any superweapon construction expenses like the DS are taken into account). Othewise Palpy could have saved a ton of dough on a huge fleet and had a better starfighter corp for instance. As demonstrated by the rebels, those are very ideal for hit and run missions. Also had he forgone any resources into megasuperweapons, he might have actually had clones for every branch of service that he needed, making loyalty to his New Order by his forces even more unquestioning than it was. Course the other argument is that TIEs are cheap and presumably easy to produce and maintain. If this is so, then they can't possibly make enough clone pilots to keep up with the fast pace of fighter manufacturing...so they had to have conscripts. Assuming of course how clones are typically grown are much along the same lines as how the Kaminoans do it (whether or not they continued to make them for the Empire after the Republic fell, or some other race was doing them too...the recipe is prolly very similar). One of the things I loved about how the events in ATOCs unfolds is that now the Emperor is poised to have soldiers on every key world he needs to under the guise of stopping the Separatists. In this respect, maybe a whole lot of clones isn't necessary...just enough to position them on such planets. From there he can begin conscription on those planets and branch out. Not just worlds with lots of shipyards, but also every key world the Separatists have established manufacturing bases. The split second he nationalizes everything, his reach is near limitless after those conquests. But now I think he faces a new problem, as forced conscription gets underway, he has to have loyalists on his fleets to safeguard everything, so I think its reasonable to assume a good many of those clone troopers were tied up doing that, at least until his propaganda machine was fully underway, then I think that eases the mindsets of the Empire a little better. After all, some people did join it willingly, so I'm not at all sure to what extent forced conscription was used after the propaganda machine was beginning to sway opinions.

I wonder if your theory would still hold water say, if while letting the rebs have a crap sector, you blockaded every single system in it, if that chances the natural disaster frequency again.

lol thanks:) I just needed to know which one was theirs

As much as I hate random disasters, I DO wish for a random event type deal...ones that don't exactly destroy resource slots necessarily, but like things that effect efficiency such that the smuggling thing does when a system is taken by force (but diplomatically still in your favor w/no enemy defense). Ya know, something akin to match some of the descriptions of key worlds I'm seeing. They could have introduced random acts of piracy (either of ships lightly defended and/or without high enough detection ratings in your fleet), as well as affecting resource loss the same way smuggling does. One or two planets did specify pirate activity in the region so in that sense those events don't have to be "random" since you can expect stuff to go wrong there. Maybe those worlds should be tougher to sway diplomatically to end those events. I just wish planets were lended the same importance by the AI that some of their descriptions present. i.e. Ukio is supposedly this mega foodstuff producing world...it ought to have the max number of energy slots all the time (yea I think some should be fixed high always/immune to natural disasters)...so not only would the planets be programmed to be one way, the AI should always treat such places as high value despite how you've set the sector at large based on those descriptions. Some places ought to be fought over such as those. Mon Cal is also one I think ought to have high slots always (mainly due to its notation of being a good spot for tons of shipyards). Sorry to get off on a rant, but this talk of placing the Alderaan astroid field got me thinking. It'd be nice to see events crop up that were not always catostrophic...such as maybe having an event from the books that addresses that ship they sent out with all their weapons after the Clone Wars, or even discovering the location of the Katana Fleet (an addition of a new mission type for characters might also be nice for such forms of "detective" work, rather than just espionage). Why couldn't random events be fun and interesting/potentially beneficial rather than always obliterating my production base? I mean seriously, I've seldom seen any of those events that are +s to my economy. I don't care if I am winning the game, I'd rather not "expect" disasters more than any other type of event. Ok, so maybe this ought to go in the wishlist thread for the next reb game heh

So there is a drawing Wizard did? Where can I glimpse that? I slummed around Wizard's pages but didn't see anything there.

I think with the Thrawn trilogy, it didn't interfere with what we know or anything. The fact that Thrawn's troopers were clones were for the purposes of that story so it wasn't like Zahn was running with a forbidden idea or concept in that respect. That story only had to do with the clones HE was coming up with for that crisis. I think the fact now that we know the bulk of stormtroopers turn out to be clones, it makes the Thrawn thing dealing with them a happy little accident cause it still fits in my opinion.

Either that or the Bulk Cruiser could have been modified. I think it could have passed for one if all its guts were torn out

I had the impression reading the comments on that site that it was something the fans came up with, not something Wizard did. That was a fan site right?

They were able to build it. I know I was playing with high importance/visibility, so that might have explained why I saw them (they may have been given some by default). I can't be totally sure though as I stopped that session at around turn 650 to reedit and try something else, and I didn't get into that many battles by that point.

Well mask, its good I suppose if the objective is to get many player-made models, but for some who are seeking as many canon designs as possible, they might end up putting that one aside. Because the ship has been prominent in quite a few of the NJO books, I expect there'll be an offical design eventually signed off by Lucas' henchemen

I don't have any problems to the extent of what's being discussed, but I thought this relates so here goes. In RebEd where you can check or uncheck who uses what, I also had it so that Imps and Rebs used the same Escort Carrier, and took away (I unchecked the Rebel's escort carrier) the rebs. Now I don't know if I need to now replace that slot with something, but the AI for the rebs still is building their escort carrier along with the Imp one. So what I want to know is am I misinterpreting what that function in the editor is for? I thought unchecking who builds what effectively removed it from the game and that it would not require me replacing the design with something else.

All I know about it is from what theforce.net's technical commentaries illlustrate. This was in their novel section... http://www.theforce.net/swtc/novels/dto.html On page 59-60 from the book Dark Tide: Onslaught. Unfortunately I've not seen it artisitcally represented anywhere yet, but my best guess for one to make an appearance would be with the line of Wizard's various RPG books or perhaps the card games. Anyway, here's the description... starship: Ralroost, an example of a new class of Bothan warship Insert: "The Bothan Assault Cruiser was one of the latest additions to the New Republic fleet. While slightly smaller than a Victory-class Star Destroyer, and possessed of leaner and less angular lines, the Ralroost boasted 20 percent more firepower than a Vic and almost half again as much in terms of shielding and armour. the ship had been designed to take a severe pounding and still hammer an enemy. .... The fighter hangars were amidships and had launch apertures that would let the fighters head up or down, as needed, to get into battle. The dual launch paths also meant recovering fighters after a battle was faster, ...." Gave a pretty good sense of scale to me as well as illuminating at least some of its capabilities. I still wanna know what the damn thing looks like

Curious to know whether having the AI have more Death Stars means they actually might blow up any systems. I've heard someone bring up that if a fleet with one finds the HQ, survives the rebel defense, it'll blow that one up.

Ah ok so its about layout and placement. For some reason I thought that maybe that disabled the Rebel's ability to move their HQ or something like that. So does this mean though that you could go over the 10 planet limit for sectors, or does this mean the total has to be at 10 only your just swapping out one system planet for another?

While still on the subject of fighters here, I wonder if besides the fighters we see going into hyperspace with the Falcon, if there might have been any others following them in we didn't see, or joined them a short time after they jumped. Just another thing to throw out there to mull over, since it appears all the fighter types we see the rebels employ all have hyperdrives, and were not dependent on another ship to bring them to battle. If not then perhaps besides the 7 or 8 fighters going with the Falcon (as far as I know it didn't even add up to a squadron just from what we see on screen), they went ahead and had Home One take on another squadron to take its place onboard (figuring that as soon as they entered the battle, they wanted to have at least some fighters already deployed to cover other deployments of starfighters into the field from those ships, not only just to have some ready if the shield was down upon arrival like they had hoped). It might have been one other method to maximize fighters at the battle, by having some already deployed before their initial jump to hyperspace, while at the same time maxing out their hanger bays with any remainders they could scrounge last minute.