From: nnhill@david.wheaton.edu (Nathan N Hill)
Subject: Re: Imperial Fleet
Organization: Wheaton College, IL
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 22:03:31 GMT

In article <1k1ej5INNe1k@gap.caltech.edu> keith@cco.caltech.edu (Keith Allan Schneider) writes:
>cjp53999@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Cory James Padfield) writes:
>
>>   According to the Star Wars role-playing game, there are four Super Star    
>>   Destroyers, one of which is the Executor. There are about 25,000 Star
>>   Destroyers.... wow, I never really knew that. I'm not sure how canon
>>   you consider this source, but it is roughly correct.
>
>This almost cannot be correct.  We see almost the entire Imperial fleet
>in Jedi.  You see them all...  probably a hundred at most.
>If there were many others sread throughout the galaxy, 
>the Rebels wouldn't be so happy about defeating the fleet at Endor.
>
>keith

While 25,000 sounds like an incredible number to us, remember that the galaxy
is TRULY HUGE. The space scales and time scales involved in SW are tremendous.
I remember reading "Dark Empire' (not canon, and generally mediocre) and being
surprised at their contention that "thousands" of Jedi knights had once
existed. But then I thought about it, and realized that there are supposedly
"thousands" of inhabited planets, such numbers would be necessary. Also, I was
surprised that they took Ben's statement about "a thousand generations"
literally...but after reading _Dune_, such timescales make sense.

Anyway, since there are 100 billion stars in our own galaxy, I presume there
are tens of billions in theirs, and with terraforming, etc, there ought to be
at least a thousand inhabited worlds...perhaps many thousands of them. To
control an entire galaxy, I should think that _at least_ one SD per planet
would be necessary. 25,000 might be a little tremendous, but it's on about 
the right order of magnitude. 

Fourteen aircraft carriers enable us to rule the seas, but if we meant to
control all commerce, fight a war, and rule all nations, we'd need more than
that. (ICBMs, perhaps....) 

Remember that the DS had firepower "greater than half the starfleet" Han
thought that the massing of such firepower would be incomprehensable: "It
would take a thousand ships with more firepower..." [In the novel: "...than
has ever been assembled."] Although I hate to get technical, I think we can
gather from this that AT LEAST 2,000 starships make up the Imperial Starfleet,
though some of them may not be Star Destroyers. Certainly there are thousands.
The question is simply, "How many thousands?" 

I think WEG may have included Victory class destroyers in their numbering.
If so, then maybe there are only several hundred or a couple thousand Imperial
class destroyers. In any case, since they have so much territory to cover, a
single ISD should still inspire awe and terror...there can only be a few in
any sector at a time.

					local Star Wars guru
______________________________________________________________________________
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that
brings total obliteration..." --from the Litany against Fear

		Nathan Hill (nnhill@david.wheaton.edu)
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Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.starwars