Empire Strikes Back 2.0. Star Wars RPG

[Zardnaar]

I have an idea for SWRPG. It's probably going to be Legends but it can still work in the new Disney cannon although it uses some Legends material.

In both versions after the Battle of Endor the Empire kinda crumbles. In Legends you have a civil war and vs the NR it lingers for another 15 years or so. In Canon they surrender with fanatics forming the First order but it seems some factions linger (see The Mandalorian). Either way my idea works for an RPG campaign.

Put simply my Imperial faction is going to go to war guerilla style vs the New Republic. Resources are limited and I don't want to give them super weapons or hidden massive fleet.

Essentially they are imperial rebels using imperial equipment. They still have some resources though.

So they are basically Germany in WW1/WW2 using subs, cruisers and raiders. In Star Wars cloaking devices are to expensive so sub approach won't work.

Now there is an imperial ship that is ideal for this. It's cheap, packs a punch, can be mass produced. It's the strike cruiser from Legends.

Strike-class medium cruiser

The Strike-class medium cruiser, also known simply as the Strike Cruiser, was a medium star cruiser designed by the Loronar Corporation during the Galactic Civil War for the Imperial Navy as a general-purpose vessel capable of modular modifications to allow it to fit many mission profiles, yet...

starwars.fandom.com

4 of them roughly equal an imperial star destroyer (ISD) but in cost you can get 8 SC for 1 ISD, 17 million vs 150 million credits. The remaining 14 million is enough to afford decent TIE fighters. 8 cruisers also have half the crew requirement of a single ISD.

Strike Cruisers are light cruisers packing heavy cruiser weaponry but not the armor. Kind of like the Graff Spee a pocket battleship. And they can carry a squadron of TIEs.

Those TIEs can be better than normal TIEs. Best bang for buck I can find is shield equipped TIE interceptors and a few TIE advanced X1 the TIE Vader flew in ANH.

Strike Cruisers are also modular, it's reasonably cheap to add more TIEs (18 vs 12). I'm thinking you could also make a "submarine" variant. Basically sensor absorbing coating, baffle drives and capital scale concussion missile launcher. Not as good as a cloaking device but you could use it for a first strike running on low power. More stealth vs invisible.

So some hot shot Imperial has figured out that the Empire should emulate the rebels. Even a single planet could afford to build a few if these things and crew them. Money saved build better TIE fighters without having to use experimental/expensive stuff like TIE Defenders.

All I need is a cool base and an interesting villain. Not so much Grand Admiral Thrawn or an Admiral Daala but a hybrid of the two.

Any thoughts on leader, location, set up, timeline etc. I'm thinking of a decade after Endor in Legends, a year or two after The Mandalorian in Canon.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Keep in mind that the historical concept you are copying (the pocket battle cruiser for commerce raiding) was a failure. One of the reasons it failed was because the need for support vessels and bases remains no matter what type of ship is used.

The commerce raiders (disguised and armed civilian ships) did better, but eventually they failed as well, and had no significant impact on the conflicts.

Navies require extensive training, construction, and maintenance facilities, which require substantial amounts of resource-gathering infrastructure. To defeat your plan, all that needs to be done is to figure out where the ships and fighters are being built, and then target those centers. The strike cruisers lack the staying power of regular ships of the line, and in any case, if they are being held back to defend friendly infrastructure, they have been neutralized insofar as their commerce-raiding mission.

As to the U-boat campaign, it was defeated because of the subs' need to communicate with the intelligence-gathering agencies so as to vector in on convoys, and the fact that escort weaponry advanced to defeat the subs' chief advantage (stealth). Area-attack weapons like hedgehogs meant that escorts only needed a general idea when the sub was in order to attack.

And all this is predicated upon the concept that sufficient damage to commercial shipping will cripple the enemy's economy; the USN's campaign against Japan worked in that conflict, but only because the enemy's heavy industry was concentrated upon islands which lacked key resources, and because the Imperial Navy was heavily conditioned for war against warships, and was exceedingly slow to change their doctrine. Terminally slow, as it turned out.

Obviously, the only standard you need to meet is what your players will accept, but your concept as a doctrine doesn't work on any level.

 

[Zardnaar]

Keep in mind that the historical concept you are copying (the pocket battle cruiser for commerce raiding) was a failure. One of the reasons it failed was because the need for support vessels and bases remains no matter what type of ship is used.

The commerce raiders (disguised and armed civilian ships) did better, but eventually they failed as well, and had no significant impact on the conflicts.

Navies require extensive training, construction, and maintenance facilities, which require substantial amounts of resource-gathering infrastructure. To defeat your plan, all that needs to be done is to figure out where the ships and fighters are being built, and then target those centers. The strike cruisers lack the staying power of regular ships of the line, and in any case, if they are being held back to defend friendly infrastructure, they have been neutralized insofar as their commerce-raiding mission.

As to the U-boat campaign, it was defeated because of the subs' need to communicate with the intelligence-gathering agencies so as to vector in on convoys, and the fact that escort weaponry advanced to defeat the subs' chief advantage (stealth). Area-attack weapons like hedgehogs meant that escorts only needed a general idea when the sub was in order to attack.

And all this is predicated upon the concept that sufficient damage to commercial shipping will cripple the enemy's economy; the USN's campaign against Japan worked in that conflict, but only because the enemy's heavy industry was concentrated upon islands which lacked key resources, and because the Imperial Navy was heavily conditioned for war against warships, and was exceedingly slow to change their doctrine. Terminally slow, as it turned out.

Obviously, the only standard you need to meet is what your players will accept, but your concept as a doctrine doesn't work on any level.

Game srat wise strike Cruisers are really nasty.

Supplies don't really matter as they have something like 2 years worth of supplies.

Space is also very big and hyperspace let's them teleport essentially.

 

[Zardnaar]

Strike Cruiser stats.

Roughly vs ISD

11% less shields
50% less firepower
13% less hull
1/8th the cost


Essentially a battlecruisers at lt cruiser cost. 8 of them less than half the crew of an ISD.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Game srat wise strike Cruisers are really nasty.

Supplies don't really matter as they have something like 2 years worth of supplies.

Space is also very big and hyperspace let's them teleport essentially.

What about repairs, refits, battle damage? Destroyed fighters? Even with a tender/repair ship handy, six months is a long time out of port. What about relief crews or port liberty? Those 2000 sailors are going to get awful sick of being stuck inside 450m of tin can. Throw in no or very limited home contact due to running silent, and you're looking at a mutiny at worst, badly degraded crew efficiency at best. Your doctrine seems to focus simply on guns and armor, and ignores the crew and logistics completely. Not to mention c3 issues.

And the entire business of production/infrastructure is still wide open, too.

 

[Zardnaar]

What about repairs, refits, battle damage? Destroyed fighters? Even with a tender/repair ship handy, six months is a long time out of port. What about relief crews or port liberty? Those 2000 sailors are going to get awful sick of being stuck inside 450m of tin can. Throw in no or very limited home contact due to running silent, and you're looking at a mutiny at worst, badly degraded crew efficiency at best. Your doctrine seems to focus simply on guns and armor, and ignores the crew and logistics completely. Not to mention c3 issues.

And the entire business of production/infrastructure is still wide open, too.

They will have a home port.

Nuclear aircraft carriers stay at sea for weeks. On Star Wars they can jump home fairly fast. Probably not going to be more than a week or two from home.

 

[Jd Smith1]

They will have a home port.

Nuclear aircraft carriers stay at sea for weeks. On Star Wars they can jump home fairly fast. Probably not going to be more than a week or two from home.

With an entire battle group in attendance, including fleet support vessel(s). Not to mention currently a CVN group is intended as an offensive combatant unit, capable of taking on any task force afloat. Your ships are raiders, hitting and running.

But again, what is protecting the home base? It will take a massive installation and thousands of workers to support cruiser-class vessels, and the enemy will certainly target them. In WW2 the Brits developed special bombs and modified four-engine bombers to hit U Boat pens.

The bases, unless they are on a heavily-populated and technologically-advanced world, will need considerable dead lift shipping to support it; what is protecting that shipping from enemy attacks?

 

[Zardnaar]

With an entire battle group in attendance, including fleet support vessel(s). Not to mention currently a CVN group is intended as an offensive combatant unit, capable of taking on any task force afloat. Your ships are raiders, hitting and running.

But again, what is protecting the home base? It will take a massive installation and thousands of workers to support cruiser-class vessels, and the enemy will certainly target them. In WW2 the Brits developed special bombs and modified four-engine bombers to hit U Boat pens.

The bases, unless they are on a heavily-populated and technologically-advanced world, will need considerable dead lift shipping to support it; what is protecting that shipping from enemy attacks?

Hidden base, thinking of a somewhat normal world with a moon that can be mined.

Or really inhospitable with an orbiting station. Inside or near a nebula that's really hard to navigate if you don't know the path.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Hidden base, thinking of a somewhat normal world with a moon that can be mined.

Or really inhospitable with an orbiting station. Inside or near a nebula that's really hard to navigate if you don't know the path.

A massive hidden base, with enough personnel to service cruisers and their 2000 man crews, that stays secret even though it will need regular ship-borne deliveries of all manner of supplies.

Yeah, that's not going to work. Not only would an intelligence agency crack the location (after all, someone had to build the thing, plus all the ship traffic; too many people know) soon, but the instant the secret is out, it is a sitting duck. You don't even need to navigate the Nebula Of Ominous Navigation Which Supply Ships Have No Problem With; all you have to do is park a task force close enough to the station and the base is thus rendered useless, tying up thousands of staff and costing megabuck for nothing.

Amateurs talk of tactics; professionals discuss logistics.

Gimmicks like 'a secret base' won't work. You are going to need a network of bases to support enough cruisers to have a fighting chance at driving up shipping losses to the breaking point, and while you're undertaking that effort (the USN needed three years) the enemy is going to be hunting bases and mounting countermeasures with all the determination that career officers and bureaucrats ten years short of retirement can bring to a 'do it or get sacked' mission. And still your supply lines are wide open, easy picking for your enemies.

Your concept is paper-thin at best.

For one thing, aside from the silly secret base, is you're going with too much ship. If your doctrine is to cripple commerce shipping, you use guided missile boats: small, fast, cheap, tiny crew. They zip in, launch a volley of torpedoes/missiles, and zip away. They meet up with a FSV that is a converted civilian freighter, rearm, spend a quick liberty aboard with whores & booze, and then its back out. Repair jobs are small enough for the FSV.

You don't need bases, your industrial and training infrastructure is minimal, your logistical footprint is both intermittent and small. Yeah, you'll lose both boats and FSV in numbers, but you've chosen a battle of attrition.

 

[Zardnaar]

A massive hidden base, with enough personnel to service cruisers and their 2000 man crews, that stays secret even though it will need regular ship-borne deliveries of all manner of supplies.

Yeah, that's not going to work. Not only would an intelligence agency crack the location (after all, someone had to build the thing, plus all the ship traffic; too many people know) soon, but the instant the secret is out, it is a sitting duck. You don't even need to navigate the Nebula Of Ominous Navigation Which Supply Ships Have No Problem With; all you have to do is park a task force close enough to the station and the base is thus rendered useless, tying up thousands of staff and costing megabuck for nothing.

Amateurs talk of tactics; professionals discuss logistics.

Gimmicks like 'a secret base' won't work. You are going to need a network of bases to support enough cruisers to have a fighting chance at driving up shipping losses to the breaking point, and while you're undertaking that effort (the USN needed three years) the enemy is going to be hunting bases and mounting countermeasures with all the determination that career officers and bureaucrats ten years short of retirement can bring to a 'do it or get sacked' mission. And still your supply lines are wide open, easy picking for your enemies.

Your concept is paper-thin at best.

For one thing, aside from the silly secret base, is you're going with too much ship. If your doctrine is to cripple commerce shipping, you use guided missile boats: small, fast, cheap, tiny crew. They zip in, launch a volley of torpedoes/missiles, and zip away. They meet up with a FSV that is a converted civilian freighter, rearm, spend a quick liberty aboard with whores & booze, and then its back out. Repair jobs are small enough for the FSV.

You don't need bases, your industrial and training infrastructure is minimal, your logistical footprint is both intermittent and small. Yeah, you'll lose both boats and FSV in numbers, but you've chosen a battle of attrition.

Star Wars has fortress world's. I'm not sure if this is a sector level threat or galactic level.

100 cruisers requires 200000 crew. Look at WW2. A single planet could build and crew that many. Hell Australia can crew them.

200 of them is more firepower than the Imperial fleet at Endor sans Deathstar.

If I use legends the Empire is still around so supporting the fleet isn't a problem.

If I use canon the Empire lasts a year post Endor and there's Imperial Renegades after that.

I don't want an Imperial Grand Admiral Thrawn clone or a Daala substitute so a sane Moff or Vice Admiral or something can probably do.