The "new republic collapsed in 2 days" really ruined ST setting

[Slowpokeking]

The fleet was barely a diversion so they could sneak fighters in to destroy the second Death Star. You'd have thought the Empire would have seen that coming but hey, it's a piece of fiction.

At the end of the day the concept that your basic person in the galaxy wouldn't know the difference between one leader to the next is built into the genre. At its core Star Wars is a Medieval Fantasy, all knights and lords and wizards...the thing is, the majority of the people in those worlds are just serfs being abused for their labor. And it didn't matter if it was a benevolent king like say King Arthur, at the end of the day the serfs were still serfs.

And it's the same with Star Wars

It did beat the imperial fleet, including breaking the shield of the Executor and caused it to fell. Even if we go by old EU, they lost half of their fleet in the battle plus Death Star II and all its troops on board.

If the Imperial fleet didn't take much damage, it would go wipe them out rather than retreat.

It's not one leader, but one leader with his moff, governors and a lot a lot corrupted officials. They were rdy to change the galaxy.

[Slowpokeking]

Yeah the fleet was still kind of small compared to the Empire's armada, it's kind of clear that they were not expecting that many Destroyers ("It's a trap!") probably just Executor and the three or so normal Destroyers Han and co. saw (The rest of the fleet were hiding behind on the far side of the moon per Palpatine's orders).

Ackbar even says that the fleet won't last long directly engaging the destroyers, although they do manage to destroy a few.

No, he said it's trap because the Death Star is functional, it could attack small target, without the shield down they could not go against it in close range. They were managed to take down many destroyers.

The mass loss of the Imperial army also caused the core worlds to rebel, if we go by new canon they collapsed in 1 year. By old G canon they lost soon after Endor as well.

Even in the old EU, which the empire lasted longer, they lost half of their destroyers.

[ChrisIII]

Ackbar and Lando aren't aware the Death Star's laser is functional until it destroys one of the cruisers, only that the shield generator is still up and they're boxed in by the destroyers and their fighters.

He does order a retreat when it does attack, but Lando tells him to give Han a bit more time and then do the Destroyer strategy (assuming the Empire won't fire on it's own men and therefore won't risk firing at the rebels next to them, and if they did, the destroyers could be hit by the Death Star's friendly fire).

[Grunty]

Ackbar and Lando aren't aware the Death Star's laser is functional until it destroys one of the cruisers, only that the shield generator is still up and they're boxed in by the destroyers and their fighters.

He does order a retreat when it does attack, but Lando tells him to give Han a bit more time and then do the Destroyer strategy (assuming the Empire won't fire on it's own men and therefore won't risk firing at the rebels next to them, and if they did, the destroyers could be hit by the Death Star's friendly fire).

It's also likely that the imperial leadership had expected the Alliance fleet to scatter and attempt to flee in all direction, not only because of the desperate situation but also because the standard MO of the Alliance had always been hit and run tactics, in order to preserve their very limited resources (compare the Battle of Scarif which Rogue One would retroactively establish).

As such they likely expected the whole thing to be a turkey shoot, which might have also encouraged the various high profile fleet commanders to park their command ships at the front of the formations, as not to look cowardly, which is in line with the imperial command culture of conspiring against one another, gaining more recognition and trying to gain favor with the emperor.

Also while it didn't exist in the minds of the movie's writers, later EU writers would establish the imperial interdictor technology, which could prevent hyper space jumps within a certain sphere, so the extended plan based on the emperors orders was likely to block their escape routes whenever they would try to break out, keeping them trapped between a rock and a hard place.

So when Lando convinced Ackbar to stand and fight instead of running, it would have certainly caught the imperial leadership on the wrong foot, especially since nobody might have been willing to act against the emperors direct order, even while the alliance ships went into "knife fighting range", where the imperial ships would constantly risk or actively hit each other, their fighters swarm tactics would actualy work against them and they would have to change formations, which would have required coordination with their hated fellow admirals.

One moment they would stand on their bridges sipping their tea, expecting a fox hunt, while dreaming of their promotions or how to accuse their fellow captains and admirals of not having fought valiant enough, when suddently the rebells came at them like the third monkey on the ramp to Noah's ark and it begann to rain.

[ChrisIII]

The Zahn trilogy implied that the Emperor's death caused the fleet's defeat as well-that he was using the force to coordinate/control the fleet. He later has C'baoth use the technique to coordinate his fleet.

The basic technique (Battle meditation) is still canon (although mostly in the minatures games), although it hasn't been said Palpatine used it at Endor.

[Slowpokeking]

Ackbar and Lando aren't aware the Death Star's laser is functional until it destroys one of the cruisers, only that the shield generator is still up and they're boxed in by the destroyers and their fighters.

He does order a retreat when it does attack, but Lando tells him to give Han a bit more time and then do the Destroyer strategy (assuming the Empire won't fire on it's own men and therefore won't risk firing at the rebels next to them, and if they did, the destroyers could be hit by the Death Star's friendly fire).

But in the end they delivered a huge blow to the fleet.

[thwhtGuardian]

But in the end they delivered a huge blow to the fleet.

But it was very clear they wouldn't have been able to really go toe to toe with the fleet in a straight battle. They won because the fleet was a diversion to allow the ground forces to sneak in and take out the Death Star's shield.

[godisawesome]

The thing is they wouldn't be slaves under the First Order, just like nothing really drastically changed under the Empire. It's like the Who said, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." If things were drastically different under the Empire or the First Order than the rebels wouldn't have been a tiny rag tag group, they would have had wide populist support. That they did not tells you that for as much as they were played out as the absolute worst of the worst by the heroes to the average joe it was just another tuesday.

And if you think things would change here in the US if we were nuked and the maga idiots would follow a liberal president elected in the aftermath, you're just being silly. We're not uniting after that, it's going to be a fractured state if any states emerge at all.

…Except that Abrams made sure that it’s clear that they *will* be slaves under the First Order and that the Resstance ultimately has massive popular support that Lando can activate, and Filoni has made it clear in all his projects before The Mandalorian timeline that there is a dramatic and drastic difference between the Galaxy’s experience before the Clone Wars and once the Empire assumes control, to further reinforce why the Empire falls so fast after Endor alongside Operation: Cinder, to allow a massive popular uprising…

…It’s just that we then *also* have TLJ being stubbornly stupid and demanding an apathetic Galaxy in all things, and then Filoni giving in to laziness in The Mandalorian timeline by trying to keep his workload small by making the New Republic look like the Old Republic, but maddeningly making illogical and unlikeable characters like Xiong or that SNL guy.

Yes, I know I’m doing the “laziness” thing again, but hear me out here on why I think that Filoni can be seen getting lazier and contradicting his own work a little bit.

Bad Batch makes a massive amount of hay for itself by portraying the Galaxy suddenly experiencing crippling oppression on all levels, observable from both sides of the former war. You’ve got massively curtailed Galactic travel, ID chips, Imperial bureaucracy being so in-your-face about its callousness and cruelty that it’s triggering desertions in brainwashed clones, and every major planet we see form the old TCW shows is shown to be in much worse state in both Bad Batch and Rebels… but it’s easier to write Xiono being just weirdly confident he can deny reality than it is to come up with some other, more reasonable idea, or to make an obvious infiltrator out of Kane rather than make Gideon and co. actually competent.

I also just think that Operation Cinder creates too many plot holes with people being calm about the Empire - especially with stuff like Battlefield II’s campaign having a prosperous loyalist world being targeted for depopulation.

It really just seems like some obsession with the OT paradigm, but without being able to realize you can just modify it.

[Frontier]

A lot of the Sequels stuff was half-baked and underfocused with the expanded material (books, shows) having to do a lot of legwork.

I guess it's kind of the same with the Prequels and the Clone Wars cartoon but I think even Lucas had more meat and consistency in the Prequels by comparison.

[godisawesome]

A lot of the Sequels stuff was half-baked and underfocused with the expanded material (books, shows) having to do a lot of legwork.

I guess it's kind of the same with the Prequels and the Clone Wars cartoon but I think even Lucas had more meat and consistency in the Prequels by comparison.

Lucas seemed to have a strongly consistent general idea of the scale he wanted in the PT, and even had a focus on detail nuanced enough to already have the “While the Seperatists are the villains, the Republic is in fact being corrupted into the Empire” idea made clear by the time AOTC was over, and to make sure it was foreshadowed by TPM.

That’s not the case with the ST, where frankly, it seems like Abrams and Johnson would fail each other’s “tests” about what was supposed to be happening on *everything*; main characters, setting descriptions, morality, etc.

[ChrisIII]

Interesting thing is Clone Wars CG overrode a lot of what was assumed Star Wars EU canon as well, including stuff that had come out during the prequel era.

For example there's the whole Mandalorian/Clone troopers thing, in the Republic Commando novels it's made clear that the troops adoped Mandalorian culture and were trained like Mandalorian warriors by Jango and several of his colleagues, there was even an action figure box set along those lines:

https://www.rebelscum.com/tacrefomega.asp

However, Clone Wars just had them be trained by some other guys and Jedi, and that's mostly it.

Also the timeline of the war was that Anakin wasn't promoted to Jedi Knight until fairly late in the war, but the Clone Wars CG and other sources have him elevated almost immediately after Geonosis.

The Separatists are also portrayed as somewhat more dimensional and sympathetic-The Neimodians for example and even part of the Trade Federation itself insist that Gunray is leading a rogue faction; as do several of the worlds and corporations tied with the Seperatists, whereas the earlier EU seems to have pretty much everything be one-dimensional.

Jedi die at different times as well, or don't die at all, in the war.

And no sign of Ashoka anywhere.

In a way the Clone CG series is sort of a prototype for the mostly clean slate Disney made out of the EU stuff.

Maybe someday some of the sequel trilogy EU will have similar treatment? Admittingly the "Operation Cinder" stuff doesn't seem to make as much sense if Palpatine's still around.

[Frontier]

Interesting thing is Clone Wars CG overrode a lot of what was assumed Star Wars EU canon as well, including stuff that had come out during the prequel era.

For example there's the whole Mandalorian/Clone troopers thing, in the Republic Commando novels it's made clear that the troops adoped Mandalorian culture and were trained like Mandalorian warriors by Jango and several of his colleagues, there was even an action figure box set along those lines:

https://www.rebelscum.com/tacrefomega.asp

However, Clone Wars just had them be trained by some other guys and Jedi, and that's mostly it.

Also the timeline of the war was that Anakin wasn't promoted to Jedi Knight until fairly late in the war, but the Clone Wars CG and other sources have him elevated almost immediately after Geonosis.

The Separatists are also portrayed as somewhat more dimensional and sympathetic-The Neimodians for example and even part of the Trade Federation itself insist that Gunray is leading a rogue faction; as do several of the worlds and corporations tied with the Seperatists, whereas the earlier EU seems to have pretty much everything be one-dimensional.

Jedi die at different times as well, or don't die at all, in the war.

And no sign of Ashoka anywhere.

In a way the Clone CG series is sort of a prototype for the mostly clean slate Disney made out of the EU stuff.

Maybe someday some of the sequel trilogy EU will have similar treatment? Admittingly the "Operation Cinder" stuff doesn't seem to make as much sense if Palpatine's still around.

I maybe forgetting something but I think Jango did some of the initial training or instruction before he left Kamino.

[godisawesome]

Interesting thing is Clone Wars CG overrode a lot of what was assumed Star Wars EU canon as well, including stuff that had come out during the prequel era.

For example there's the whole Mandalorian/Clone troopers thing, in the Republic Commando novels it's made clear that the troops adoped Mandalorian culture and were trained like Mandalorian warriors by Jango and several of his colleagues, there was even an action figure box set along those lines:

https://www.rebelscum.com/tacrefomega.asp

However, Clone Wars just had them be trained by some other guys and Jedi, and that's mostly it.

Also the timeline of the war was that Anakin wasn't promoted to Jedi Knight until fairly late in the war, but the Clone Wars CG and other sources have him elevated almost immediately after Geonosis.

The Separatists are also portrayed as somewhat more dimensional and sympathetic-The Neimodians for example and even part of the Trade Federation itself insist that Gunray is leading a rogue faction; as do several of the worlds and corporations tied with the Seperatists, whereas the earlier EU seems to have pretty much everything be one-dimensional.

Jedi die at different times as well, or don't die at all, in the war.

And no sign of Ashoka anywhere.

In a way the Clone CG series is sort of a prototype for the mostly clean slate Disney made out of the EU stuff.

Maybe someday some of the sequel trilogy EU will have similar treatment? Admittingly the "Operation Cinder" stuff doesn't seem to make as much sense if Palpatine's still around.

Weirdly, for myself, I found that I went from desperately wanting the then-EU Mandos explored (Abel G. Peña’s article on them was awesome) to wanting it disregarded (Karen Traviss’s frankly weird handling of them after a promising start) and eventually embracing the TCW version (especially once the “Mauldalorians” showed up.)

Still that was in stuff that the old EU had only ever treated as a “periphery” aspect of the Cline Wars, which, even with TCW’s expansion in areas like the Mandos, remained largely the same framework, in part because everyone agreed that ROTS was awesome, so they knew what to build with and what not to. My biggest beef with the canon changes wound up being more that the Twi-Lek homeworld went from an awesome non-rotating hell-scape to another desert planet.

But when it comes to the ST’s war… the first question LFL has to answer is what they want it to be and whose lead to follow - their preferred creator Rian Johnson, who nevertheless caused them to have a panic attack over what he left them with, or the dude who brought in his own separate production team in Abrams, who wound up making more of the ST’s substance than Johnson almost by default.

To me, what would make sense and create some interest:

- Follow TFA and TROS in making the First Order too small to conquer the Galaxy, but their first strike strong enough to destabilize it.

- Clarify that Operation Cinder destroyed much of the Galaxy’s logistical apparatus to make sure that no one could ever match the Final Order Fleet of it got deployed; modify stuff from the Disney+ shows to show an overtaxed New Republic rather than an ignorant one.

- Make it so that almost all the major systems “lock-up” and fortify themselves - but separately, after one or two desert to the First Order, because now they don’t trust each other. Canto Bight can be one of those defectors, but mocked as being idiots who immediately have their children stolen by the First Order.

- Have the reason why no one responds in TLJ be obfuscated entirely from that film’s stated reasons - systems and supporters didn’t think the number of Resistance fighters left was worth risking a fight with the main First Order fleet and exposing their own individual worlds to possible strike back.

-… Also, I’d have “TLJ!Luke inspires the Galaxy!” be poo-pooed and mocked a bit, just so that “ Finn/Rey/Han/Poe/The OT story inspires the Galaxy!” takes a greater precedent; it’s important to acknowledge that the Galaxy has *real* heroism for inspiration, not tall tales obfuscating cynical pretension.

-So the First Order finds itself kind of operating without focused opposition, but also completely unable to rule, and having to instead pick at the scraps of the Galaxy and find themselves “locked down” as well laying siege on three or four key systems to prevent them from uniting and posing a logistically superior threat.

- The Resistance then becomes the active saboteurs and insurgents, and perhaps even achieve some kind of logistically definitive but costly victory before TROS, that seems like it will clearly allow the Galaxy to respond, pushing Kylo’s desperation when Palpatine’s call goes out.

-… And thus, you get a handful of interesting scenario battles and confrontations between TLJ and TROS, “de-fang” some of the worst of TLJ setting wise, and get us to the real issue: the characters.

- …And for the characters, I’d honestly go with “Do TFA’s sequel as much as possible, and only integrate TROS stuff where practical.” Kylo is insane and delusional, and Rey is only “tied” to him by Force magic, which she frankly finds disturbing. Finn finds himself treated more respectfully, and is set up for a post-ST Jedi story. Leia trains Rey in a genuinely engaging way. Pryde does the kind of striaght-forward stuff that Hux should have been doing, and maybe in general you set the stage for some Post-TROS stuff that can help even more (Rey and Finn romance, complete rejection of Reylo, any more possible retcons to TLJ’s story, etc.)

[Jokerz79]

Even Lucas was going to have Luke fall from grace in the Sequels trilogy. In his treatments Luke was going to be off training his New Jedi Order which would have been children because Lucas was determined to have Luke reinstate all of the flaws of the Old Jedi Order such as Jedi must be trained as children and no marriages. Lucas' Sequel Trilogy Luke was not EU/Legends Luke. His nephew world kill his students and Luke would go off to an island to live in seclusion until the protagonist of the new trilogy a young female tentatively named Kira in some of the treatments would convince him to come back. A lot of what we got in the Sequel trilogy with Luke as sloppy as it was also what Lucas had in mind for the character.

The New Republic fell in Legends and became the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances a play on Galaxy Far Far away.

It's like when people complaining about a cloned Palpatine in the Sequel trilogy while praising Legends ignoring Legends also had a clone Palpatine back.

[Frontier]

Even Lucas was going to have Luke fall from grace in the Sequels trilogy. In his treatments Luke was going to be off training his New Jedi Order which would have been children because Lucas was determined to have Luke reinstate all of the flaws of the Old Jedi Order such as Jedi must be trained as children and no marriages. Lucas' Sequel Trilogy Luke was not EU/Legends Luke. His nephew world kill his students and Luke would go off to an island to live in seclusion until the protagonist of the new trilogy a young female tentatively named Kira in some of the treatments would convince him to come back. A lot of what we got in the Sequel trilogy with Luke as sloppy as it was also what Lucas had in mind for the character.

The New Republic fell in Legends and became the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances a play on Galaxy Far Far away.

It's like when people complaining about a cloned Palpatine in the Sequel trilogy while praising Legends ignoring Legends also had a clone Palpatine back.

It all comes down to execution in the end. And the Sequels just didn't have it.