Star Wars thread of great justice!
- Thread starter Tyrant
- Start date
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
I suppose in medieval times, when armies of several thousand faced other armies of similar size, and a significant portion of the casualties were merely wounded and/or taken prisoner, rather than killed, the millions that died during the 20th century would have seemed unimaginable too. I'm still not sure what to think about such numbers, honestly - on the one hand, I don't like them, because they make the games seem small (you know, when we see small colonies of several million wiped out... it's a drop in the ocean). But on the other hand, they're neat, because they make us realise that the 27th century really is different, and the population of mankind hasn't doubled or tripled since our time, but increased by some unimagineable factor.
(I'd be interested in seeing a detailed breakdown of the casualties - how many of them were warriors versus how many were civilians, how many died in the fighting versus how many took their own lives (in the case of the Kilrathi, that is), etc... but it's probably a good thing that official sources don't fixate too much on such stuff)
NinjaLA
Alex Von T.
Its much better they don't try to define it.. if you start thinking too hard, thousands of worlds should be able to produce hundreds of thousands of ships if not millions of ships which take the Tigers Claw and Concordia and reduce them to a notch in the armor of the kilrathi war machine.
And starwars has a planet called Coruscant, a planet totally covered by one big city which would reasonably have about 100 billion people if most of those buildings are occupied.
makes you wonder how many people are on New Detroit, eh?
And starwars has a planet called Coruscant, a planet totally covered by one big city which would reasonably have about 100 billion people if most of those buildings are occupied.
makes you wonder how many people are on New Detroit, eh?
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
The Wing Commander timeline they expanded but never used for WCIV deals with that somewhat, talking about mass suicides among the Kilrathi after the surrender.
The suggestion has always been that there are thousands upon thousands of warships... but that *carriers* are very unique (possibly because neither side based their navies around them when the war started, and the entire conflict was a process of catch-up...).
... and anything in Gemini was a recent expansion -- one wonders if the core worlds have even more elaborate city-planets.
You're right, I read though that during the Yuuzhan Vong invasion in the Star Wars universe that the total New Republic losses was some 345 trillion. I could be wrong, but it seems like an awful amount.
As a French General remarked at the Charge of the Light Brigade (In English) "Magnificent, but it is not war."
I guess you can't really argue with the story, the writer set the casualties as such for a reason, to show humanity's population is nothing like it was back in the 21st centuary. The population has almost taken on a life of its own, and is growing greatly.
The casualty numbers just show that war in this future, has moved onto a different scale entirely.
Cheers,
Red Coat
LeHah
212 Squadron - "The Old Man's Eyes And Ears"
Its not the most awful thing you'll find in Expanded Universe either - but then, so much is terrible about EU, you become numb to it after a while.
LeHah
212 Squadron - "The Old Man's Eyes And Ears"
As LOAF stated earlier, Star Wars isn't about technology or how many Force powers there are. Yet there are a dozen novels about Boba Fett and how many weapons he has on his outfit or Lando being stuck on an endlessly long ship or yet another superweapon.
Star Wars is about - I hate to use the word - mythos, not technobabble. I don't care that there is a new Star Destroyer class made by Kuat Drive Yards. Add to that some of the utterly idiotic stories that have seen print. A Super Star Destroyer burried under Coruscant, used as a prison? Dozens of Jedi popping up after near extinction? Come on already...
Death
gh0d (Administrator)
And let's not get into the New Jedi Order stuff, and its fantardisms (particularly "elite squadron lead by a bad-ass kid saves the universe")...
There are some good EU novels, but outside those relative few (Zahn's stuff, for example [even if it is kinda guilty of the technobabble thing], and I recall liking I, Jedi, by Michael Stackpole) the EU novels would've been the real Ultimate Weapon for the Empire, by publishing them, and making the rebellion so embarrassed to be associated with the whole civil war thing that they just go into hiding, to live their lives in obscurity.
There are some good EU novels, but outside those relative few (Zahn's stuff, for example [even if it is kinda guilty of the technobabble thing], and I recall liking I, Jedi, by Michael Stackpole) the EU novels would've been the real Ultimate Weapon for the Empire, by publishing them, and making the rebellion so embarrassed to be associated with the whole civil war thing that they just go into hiding, to live their lives in obscurity.
Because, pretty much anything that doesent have the words Grand, Admiral, Thrawn, or maybe one or two of the NJO series, pretty much suck. (mostly, although Karen Travisses Republic Commandos are pretty decent, its just that the 3million debacle was pretty much a cluster-fuck from the get-go from, well, everyone involved.)
Mav23
Swabbie
Banned
And let's not get into the New Jedi Order stuff, and its fantardisms (particularly "elite squadron lead by a bad-ass kid saves the universe")...
There are some good EU novels, but outside those relative few (Zahn's stuff, for example [even if it is kinda guilty of the technobabble thing], and I recall liking I, Jedi, by Michael Stackpole) the EU novels would've been the real Ultimate Weapon for the Empire, by publishing them, and making the rebellion so embarrassed to be associated with the whole civil war thing that they just go into hiding, to live their lives in obscurity.
I was never even tempted to read a New Jedi Order book, the covers turned me away from them before I got anywhere close to wanting to read them. (Yeah yeah, don't judge a book...
)I actually have I, Jedi shitting on my bookshelf right now, just never got around to reading it. I must have had it since I was in grade school. Maybe it's time to give it a go.
What most people seem to forget is that those worlds actually have inhabitants that will take up arms when the separatists come knocking and if the Naboo, Gungans and 2 Jedi can take down a Droid Army, image how a real militia will do from a world that isn’t all nice peaceful and on the backwater end of the Rim.
To me the Clone Army always seems to just be a handy well trained quick reaction force. @ Kilrathi losses
Must have been hiding these in huge warrens under the imperial city. Oo
7,4 Billions would seem more fitting (which is interestingly also the number in the German translation of the Prophecy guide if I recall correctly). I mean earth today holds more then 6 billion and the TC blew away there homeworld after all.
@SW-EU
SW-Books (and Comics) been getting better imho. The real bad stuff with Callista, Daala and what not is thankfully done with. Though I have stopped reading the last few new ones cause I just get really numb after reading to much of the same series for to long.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
That makes a lot of sense, especially from a narrative standpoint -- a giant unlimited army of clones really isn't *interesting*. A thin white line of them who saves the galaxy in big glorious battles has some stories to tell...
Yeah... although, now that I think about it, "the Kilrathi wiped out my planet" is actually a pretty common backstory in WC -- Iceman, Payback, Hawk, etc. If we're losing planets of billions of people regularly, it could add up.
... makes you wonder about the Kilrathi, though, since Confed isn't known for wiping out entire worlds (with two exceptions).
Hmmm... maybe there rally weren’t that many Kilrathi in there colonies. Nearly always when he hear of there planets they seem fairly unfriendly, desolated places they took from another race that exploited them before, or weren’t all to nice to start with. Maybe most did thus die during the destruction of Kilrah.
Alternatively, maybe Kilrathi civilians committed mass suicides if there worlds were captured, whilst Terrans would more commonly be taken as slaves and would be handed back after the war, or could be rescued.
Alternatively, maybe Kilrathi civilians committed mass suicides if there worlds were captured, whilst Terrans would more commonly be taken as slaves and would be handed back after the war, or could be rescued.
AD
Finder of things, Doer of stuff
Yeah, maybe this includes worlds that The empire wiped out themselves to keep them from pulling a Gorah Khar.
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
7.4 billion would seem really awfully low to me - I mean, I would expect at least that many Kilrathi to die just with the destruction of Kilrah. So, 7.4 trillion makes more sense, even if it's so remarkably high for us.
Hmm... even with "just" 7.4 billions the TC would still have to kill an average of more then half a million Kilrathi a day to reach the number in the 35 years of war. If we go for the trillions its more then half a billion a day which is even harder to believe in a war with a small number of large campaigns and lots of small raids back and forth.
PS: Just checked the german guide and it also lists Trillions (it says billions but europeas have another meaning for that number which equals the US Trillion)
PS: Just checked the german guide and it also lists Trillions (it says billions but europeas have another meaning for that number which equals the US Trillion)
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Well, again, you must remember that it's not about averages - you would have had months during which only a few thousand soldiers died, and and then you would have had seconds during which entire planets, billions of people, were obliterated. With the Kilrathi, there's the additional issue of post-war suicides - given what we know about their society, it really wouldn't be a huge leap of faith to assume that more of them could have died after the war than during it.
LeHah
212 Squadron - "The Old Man's Eyes And Ears"
It will take a long, long time for Star Wars to find its footing again when it comes to EU. Ten years of fetid crap is not easily forgotten and a good book or two doesn't undo the rising number of offenders like Shatterpoint, Dark Crystal or the KW Jeter novels.