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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   2283 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 21, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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There is a proposed science-fiction genre, 'rocketpunk', which exists to respond to the basic problem of hard sci-fi: namely, computers are better in space than people. If I was a better writer with more time I'd make some. The basic idea is that it's an alternate reality where computer technology hit a wall very early on, justifying manned missions. I suspect to have workable science fiction, even as soft as star wars, then you need something on the spectrum at least.

In any case, we don't get a lot of glimpses of what the civilian economy in star wars looks like. It could be that the vast majority of the population lives on welfare and droids do the actual work.

The economics of Star Wars are a complete mess. They can build moon-sized battlestations that vaporize planets (not to mention Starkiller Base!), implying Kardashev II capabilities in mass and energy manipulation... that aren't displayed anywhere else in the setting.

Better not to think about it too hard. It really doesn't make sense for all key political events to be decided by the outcome of 1v1 lightsaber duels either but it's cool!

It really doesn't make sense for all key political events to be decided by the outcome of 1v1 lightsaber duels either but it's cool!

How about this: Jedis can see the future except where other Jedis are involved. If they tell an underling to do something, other Jedi/Sith will pretty much instantly know their plans. So, as much as possible, they have to:

  • Play things close to the chest. Give people instructions to put them in the right place at the right time, then call them once they're there and everything is set up to tell them what they'll actually be doing, just before they are to do it.
  • Do as much as possible personally. No Jedi can predict another Jedi (the possibilities of recursive precog quickly become unmanageable) so they're the only ones capable of truly secret movement.

I think you could write this into a pretty good setting--at its limits it totally justifies main character syndrome, because the Jedi are the only real agents in the universe.

All that is interesting, but why not bring say... ten droidekas with you as a personal escort, so you can beat any Jedi that pop out at you? Stalin had maybe 15-25 NKVD protecting him at all times but Yoda can walk right up to Darth Sidious in his throne room, knock out two guards and fight in a totally deserted senate hall?

Why weren't there at least 100 elite clone commandoes equipped with anti-jedi weaponry protecting the supreme chancellor in the hours after he launches a purge of the Jedi temple? None of it makes sense!

I think you'd say that the anti-precog field doesn't extend beyond your person. So a Jedi with an entourage is virtually undefeatable, yes, but also predictable and thus avoidable.

But yeah, this is obviously not what's actually happening in the setting, I just think it would be a fun tweak that would make for some interesting possibilities.

We can take upper kardashev II civilization for granted but there is a narrative reason for 1v1 duels to decide the outcomes of events.

In general the empire seemed to like big threatening super weapons that weren’t necessarily the most cost-effective use of resources but had value in being big and intimidating. It’s not like misallocation of military resources for signaling value is unheard of in our world. Poor resource allocation and leadership mistakes of the kinds predicted by imperial doctrine explain quite a bit about the plot.

If you have upper Kardashev II, then you wouldn't see space battles of maybe 80 big ships on both sides, like Endor or Coruscant. You'd see 80 billion ships slugging it out over months.

This is a setting where glorified teddy bears with sticks and stones manage to overcome thousands of highly trained professional soldiers with heavy weapons! It doesn't make sense and that's fine.

There are narrative reasons for this- namely imperial doctrine pushes for really big ships over more ships and the rebel fleet has to keep up, and it tends to centralize authority in one spot so a single fleet getting wiped out fractures imperial power, despite the existence of thousands more.

Lore tends points to a single star destroyer as basically a 1-1 match for a mid level industrialized world, which almost axiomatically points to the tax revenues from multiple planets being needed to find a single one. That also points to a security doctrine which needs to hold back a huge majority of the fleet to respond to rebellions and protests because it’s definitionally outnumbered badly. All this accords with stated imperial doctrine- eg the Tarkin doctrine. When push comes to shove the empire is undergunned(perhaps due to its unpopularity) and attempting to compensate with intimidation factor. Even small losses(what Endor objectively was) can unravel that fast and even small victories add up.

To steelman the imperial plan at Endor, the goal was to lure the rebel capital ship fleet into a trap and eliminate it, so that the privateering and insurgency would be crushable by smaller ships making up the bulk of the fleet(this fits with the old EU’s characterization), but the elimination of the top two figures along with multiple flag officers led to local governors and satraps declaring independence with the help of ambitious imperial military officers, which formed an imperial death spiral. It wasn’t battlefield losses that broke imperial military might- it was state failure.

I like the EU as much as anyone. I like how in the Thrawn books they try and rationalize the setting, make things seem more logical and explain Endor as the fleet being borg-slaved to the Emperor so it unravelled after he died... I like this ridiculously big EU political compass: https://old.reddit.com/r/TheDeepCore/comments/ll19bs/12x12_political_compass_for_star_wars/

But if 4km long, thin, pointy Star Destroyers are rare and expensive capital ships, how are the Imperials able to build a 160 km wide, spherical Death Star, then make good progress on an even bigger one 4 years after the first is lost? The black budget for superweapons surely can't be more than 5% of the economy, or even half the military budget. We only know of a few highly industrialized planets in the Empire, Kuat and Corellia for instance. There doesn't seem to be much broad-based wealth, nor does the administration seem very efficient if there are large pools of Hutts, smugglers and bounty hunters running around doing their own thing.

They should not be capable of building gigantic moonsized planetbusters if they can't field thousands and thousands of star destroyers.

Lucasfilm and Disney do not understand the logic of wealth and military procurement, there's no basic sense of understanding scale. Putting to one side all the expert analysis of Star Wars scale they do on spacebattles (for instance here: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/star-wars-mass-of-a-star-destroyer.464536/) it just doesn't make any sense. The Kaminoans supplied 300,000 clones for the Republic with a million more well on the way! That's about enough to secure Ukraine, not the galaxy. The First Order somehow manage to produce an even bigger planetary superweapon that eats stars. Palpatine manages to throw together a gigantic fleet of Star Destroyers from a hidden planet at the edge of the galaxy.

The empire did have tens of thousands of imperial star destroyers, though, and tens of thousands more lesser capital ships. We see the pride of the fleet, but we don’t the the kinds of massive formations the empire is theoretically capable of, and there’s tons of reasons for this. How often do all twelve US carriers operate together?

What we see on screen is the equivalent of a single carrier strike group. There are hundreds more in the fleet and the empire disintegrates rather than being defeated in a war of attrition. The disintegration is likely a result of coup-proofing; both the big boss and his top guy are gone, and no one else has the loyalty of the entire fleet, so individual flag officers and moffs have every incentive to play hardball with both the central government and each other, and eventually to secede into warlordism.

Your political compass link takes me to a picture of a nice hat.

That is quite strange. It should've been https://old.reddit.com/r/TheDeepCore/comments/ll19bs/12x12_political_compass_for_star_wars/

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