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There is a trope known as Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale (see here-> http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale). Aside from the obvious implications in that ships zoom across the galaxy at astounding speeds and distance is meaningless, you also witness space battles taking place within very small distances for the sake of looking cool even though a realistic fight would occur at distances of hundreds of kilometers.

More importantly though, is the apparent difficulty of creating a realistic future military. There is the obvious limitation that a faction's navy is limited by the amount of ships they have and it is safe to assume that the cost of said vessels would be far beyond that of modern warships, but is it also assumed that the relative cost also increases?

The largest current warship is the Nimitz class aircraft carrier. It measures just over 300m in length and has a crew of just of roughly 5,500. Only a handful of these exist and their operating cost is enormous.

Is it feasible to have space faring warships of a similar or greater size?

As far as armies go, a popular example of ineptitude is the "Grand Army of the Republic" that consists of less than 2 million Clone Troopers for a galaxy spanning Republic of thousands of inhabited systems.

There are also examples in Star Trek and Babylon 5 of wars being nowhere near the scale of Earth's largest wars, despite involving entire worlds instead of a single planet.

I don't know if this scale issue is due to writers being unable or unwilling to grapple with the fact a futuristic military would number in the billions if it remained in proportion with modern forces or if these scifi militaries are scaled down because of the limitations of space travel.

For example, transporting an entire division (upwards of 20,00 soldiers), would require a massive vessel or many smaller vessels. Moving an entire army group would be an amazing feat.

And if, such vessels were capable of being simply blasted out of the sky/space, then the death toll in just transporting troops during a war would be beyond almost incomprehensible.

Which then begs the question, is interplanetary warfare that makes use of large armies even feasible or would galactic warfare primarily rely upon a relatively smaller number of warships capable of decimating planets?

Amaya wrote:There is a trope known as Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale (see here-> http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale). Aside from the obvious implications in that ships zoom across the galaxy at astounding speeds and distance is meaningless, you also witness space battles taking place within very small distances for the sake of looking cool even though a realistic fight would occur at distances of hundreds of kilometers.

More importantly though, is the apparent difficulty of creating a realistic future military. There is the obvious limitation that a faction's navy is limited by the amount of ships they have and it is safe to assume that the cost of said vessels would be far beyond that of modern warships, but is it also assumed that the relative cost also increases?

The largest current warship is the Nimitz class aircraft carrier. It measures just over 300m in length and has a crew of just of roughly 5,500. Only a handful of these exist and their operating cost is enormous.

Is it feasible to have space faring warships of a similar or greater size?

As far as armies go, a popular example of ineptitude is the "Grand Army of the Republic" that consists of less than 2 million Clone Troopers for a galaxy spanning Republic of thousands of inhabited systems.

There are also examples in Star Trek and Babylon 5 of wars being nowhere near the scale of Earth's largest wars, despite involving entire worlds instead of a single planet.

I don't know if this scale issue is due to writers being unable or unwilling to grapple with the fact a futuristic military would number in the billions if it remained in proportion with modern forces or if these scifi militaries are scaled down because of the limitations of space travel.

For example, transporting an entire division (upwards of 20,00 soldiers), would require a massive vessel or many smaller vessels. Moving an entire army group would be an amazing feat.

And if, such vessels were capable of being simply blasted out of the sky/space, then the death toll in just transporting troops during a war would be beyond almost incomprehensible.

Which then begs the question, is interplanetary warfare that makes use of large armies even feasible or would galactic warfare primarily rely upon a relatively smaller number of warships capable of decimating planets?

You are thinking to hard about this. With unobtainium or 'Awesome sauce' powering everything who knows what could happen. With the examples you have given I think budget considerations hampered things more then grand vision ( not for SW...that was just lame and the prequils never happened imho).

I know this is going to sound cliche, but check out some animes, some of them seem to have the grand vision you are looking for with the somewhat real life logistics you seem to be interested in. Legend of the Galactic Hero's might fit the bill. Large set piece space ship battles with 100,000- 250,000 ships per side, almost whole episodes devoted to talking about a planets economy and how it fits into the war effort. Might just be a win-win

Most shows are like asking the 40k question "How does power armour work?" GW's answer "Shut up it just does"

The mechanics behind how something works is largely irrelevant with the exception that it could allow large vessels to be rapidly constructed in massive quantities. For example, the claim that at its peak there were over 25,000 Star Destroyers in action. This translates to roughly 1.1 billion personnel aboard Star Destroyers, which in the Star Wars galaxies seems an appropriate or at least more believable amount.

What you're talking about is "Space opera".

It isn't supposed to be realistic. Space is just used for an exciting background, much like heroic science fantasy.

Which then begs the question, is interplanetary warfare that makes use of large armies even feasible or would galactic warfare primarily rely upon a relatively smaller number of warships capable of decimating planets?

Hard to know until it happens. I would say though that while space battles between giant space ships and robots is cool, it's probably not going to happen. At least the sea is dimensionally limited, but space? Any conventional idea of tactics, logistics, operations, and strategy flies out the window.

I would theorize battles would likely be limited to orbital engagements between forces. What kind of forces? I have no clue.

It would depend on the technology involved.

If you look at The Culture series (Iain M Banks), the ships in that can draw energy from the underlying fabric of the universe, convert it into matter, and make the matter into new ships. Their capability is limited mainly by the time available.

A ship of that tech level could wander the galaxy for a few years and build an enormous fleet.

It's not necessary to have the setting completely realistic, but some internal consistency would be nice.

Such as how you go from 2 million Clone Troopers defending the galaxy to 25,000 Star Destroyers in less than 50 years.

An aggressive building program

I'd go more with the idea that the typical movie goer would be impressed with the 1.2 million total and not think much of it, but someone that actually reads the books is a little nerdier and won't go along with that idea.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Grand_Army_of_the_Republic

Fixed: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Grand_Army_of_the_Republic#Numbers Think it was more of a misunderstanding than anything else. Also you have to realize the setting plays a role. For example, in star trek, starfleet is not a military organization so its not nearly as large as an equivalent military force. Additionally, the population figures that you're dealing with outside the handful of 'core worlds' (home planets and first few colonies settled) are really small (talking thousands to millions tops).

The numbers section is just an attempt to retcon Lucas' bad writing. It makes sense for the cloners to refer to their products as units, instead of individuals.

Unless Lucas wanted to be intentionally vague about their numbers.

Who knows? Let's speculate together!

Amaya wrote:It's not necessary to have the setting completely realistic, but some internal consistency would be nice.

Such as how you go from 2 million Clone Troopers defending the galaxy to 25,000 Star Destroyers in less than 50 years.

Well, since it is the SW universe you have fixated on...
There was never any indication that the clone trooper project was ever halted.
The Empire consisted of thousands of worlds, some better at starship construction than others. Han Solo mentions that the Star Destroyers are of Corellian origin.
There is evidence that there are troops other than the clones, especially among the officer ranks.
Given that Earth has an estimated population of 7+ billion, a decent estimation for a base population for the Empire, given variences in planetary populations, would be roughly 5 trillion (based on only 1000 planets).
If only 1% of that population is involved in the military that gives an estimated military strength of 50 billion with a possible "army" of 2+ million clones plus maybe 20-30 billion others. The clone "Storm Troopers" would be used as shock troops that are considered expendable and easily replaced. Most of the other military would be functionaries and specialists.

The Rebellion would most likely be a smaller force but could still top 10 billion, given that even an unimportant backwater world like Tatooine would have heard of it.

Hows that fit your scale questions?

I'm just using it as an example of poor scaling.

There other examples in other series, such as in B5 the Earth-Minbari war apparently only has 250,000 human casualties.

The argument that there are more than 2-3 million Clones is flawed alone in the fact that Kamino is covered primarily in water and doesn't have the size or resources to produce 1 million 'units' of clones within a year, assuming that they're discussing battalion sized (500-600 strong) elements.

The most logical answer is that Lucas has a terrible sense of scale and that fans and EU writers are trying to make up for his errors.

Oceans are usually teaming with food. They can just build themselves more spiffy platform cities. Just saying XD

There's a reference in Darth Plagueis (recent novel) that the army is a million strong.

helgrenze wrote:

Amaya wrote:It's not necessary to have the setting completely realistic, but some internal consistency would be nice.

Such as how you go from 2 million Clone Troopers defending the galaxy to 25,000 Star Destroyers in less than 50 years.

Well, since it is the SW universe you have fixated on...
There was never any indication that the clone trooper project was ever halted.
The Empire consisted of thousands of worlds, some better at starship construction than others. Han Solo mentions that the Star Destroyers are of Corellian origin.
There is evidence that there are troops other than the clones, especially among the officer ranks.
Given that Earth has an estimated population of 7+ billion, a decent estimation for a base population for the Empire, given variences in planetary populations, would be roughly 5 trillion (based on only 1000 planets).
If only 1% of that population is involved in the military that gives an estimated military strength of 50 billion with a possible "army" of 2+ million clones plus maybe 20-30 billion others. The clone "Storm Troopers" would be used as shock troops that are considered expendable and easily replaced. Most of the other military would be functionaries and specialists.

The Rebellion would most likely be a smaller force but could still top 10 billion, given that even an unimportant backwater world like Tatooine would have heard of it.

Hows that fit your scale questions?

Population is higher than that. The official census of Coruscant placed the planetary pop at 1 trillion, not incuding all the other transients, etc. (which make the estimated pop about 3 trillion... for one planet... alone).

The argument that there are more than 2-3 million Clones is flawed alone in the fact that Kamino is covered primarily in water and doesn't have the size or resources to produce 1 million 'units' of clones within a year, assuming that they're discussing battalion sized (500-600 strong) elements.

Kamino's cities and population exists beneath the surface as well as above... don't discount the existence of what you cannot see. Also, there is such thing as interstellar commmerce, what the Kaminoans cant acquire on their own planet they can trade for elsewhere (which is how the one dude who owned the diner in attack of the clones knew of them).

Perhaps it's based on the British Empire model? As in relatively small military forces that are very agile due to supremacy of the seas (or in this case, space). If you have spacecraft that can travel vast distances in short periods of time, then you wouldn't need massive amounts of troops (as in, billions) in order to pacify worlds, because you can effectively be in several places at once. Sort of how Wellington fought Napoleon. Or something.

I dunno, I'm just thinking aloud.

Actually, I think you're probably right, OP. I think Lucas is just not good with scale.

True, Kamino is a water world but the only "structure" shown is the part that is above the water. All indications from the film suggest that there is more to that structure below the surface.

Also there were several groups of clones in developement shown, from developement vats to a group that was at the 5 year stage. If they staggared developement on a yearly or even a 5 year interval, they would still have plenty of replacements.


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chaos0xomega wrote:
Population is higher than that. The official census of Coruscant placed the planetary pop at 1 trillion, not incuding all the other transients, etc. (which make the estimated pop about 3 trillion... for one planet... alone).

True, but I doubt that Tatooine has more than 5 mil pop. so it evens out.

Also in Iain M Banks' culture series, the first novel no less, he describes a space battle with a distance of well over a million kilometers between the ships, so this has been adressed.

Your point about mass troop carriers is an interesting one. Though it makes one think that If a futuristic culture was so risk averse when it came to casualties surely the concept of Human ground troops would be non-existant. Do it all with cyborgs. In a 'diminished scarcity' futuristic society the resources to build ships and robots would be a far less valuable commodity than human lives.

Or just do my idea: The simulated war. If two super advanced cultures came to blows would it not be wisest to merely simulate the war to discern the victor rather than fight it?

Or just do my idea: The simulated war. If two super advanced cultures came to blows would it not be wisest to merely simulate the war to discern the victor rather than fight it?

Until someone decides they didn't like the results and decided to start shooting.

David Weber (sci-fi writer) seems to understand scale and logistics quite well. Same with John Ringo. William Dietz is another one.

I've only run into a few that didn't make much sense scale wise and they were just using space as the setting for a hero tale.

I'll agree that on Television/Movies scale is a major issue but I think that's due to the medium.

Perkustin wrote:Or just do my idea: The simulated war. If two super advanced cultures came to blows would it not be wisest to merely simulate the war to discern the victor rather than fight it?

Star Trek episode #24.. A Taste of Armageddon
"Anan 7 informs Kirk that the simulated attacks and following executions is the agreed system of war decided by both sides in a treaty with Vendikar. A conventional war was deemed too destructive to the environments and societies of both planets."

in books scale can be addressed realistically, but movies and tv?

who wants to see a space battle where neither ship can see each other?

Kaminoo was not the only clone producing world. There were several.

Battletech fails pretty bad at this in most respects, so far as have super-futuristic artillery that has a range of a couple of hundred yards and a travel time that would indicate they are moving at half the speed of a paintball.

Where is Babylon 5's scale off exactly? The Earth civil war involved dozens of heavy destroyers. A Destroyer is 1700 meters long. Considering they had come out of a war with an alien race that had effectively wiped out most of Earth's military 14 years before, and that the humanity only had Earth and 14 or so colonies during B5, I'm not getting the issue.




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LordofHats wrote:

Or just do my idea: The simulated war. If two super advanced cultures came to blows would it not be wisest to merely simulate the war to discern the victor rather than fight it?

Until someone decides they didn't like the results and decided to start shooting.

its like there was a Star Trek episode like this or something...oops someone Ninja'd that already.

True - TV / movies about the closest you can get is something like the major battles in B5/DS9/japanese manga. After all you the scale of a big fleet in Macross when they are jumping in, but you can't really portray 5 million ships going toe to toe that well, at least without some prebuscent Japanese girl singing and lots of pilots grimacing...

Thats a lot of ships

I really miss B-5, god I loved the shadows mother ships and their tech. =o] The Vorlons could kiss my white ass though. Even the GF who I brainwashed convinced to watch B5 with me didn't like the Vorlons.

What do want?
Who are you?

Cost and availability of energy ultimately dictates how costly it is to manufacture and maintain anything - with a cheap, efficient energy supply it would be possible to reduce the cost of pretty much everything; vast quantities of resources can be strip mined from dead worlds and asteroids (using the cheap enerygy to power largely automated mining and metalworking processes), which in turn reduces raw material costs, etc...

Once you reach a certain level of technology and sphere of influence it is easier to see vast fleets of ships crewed by millions or even billions of men and women. It still kind of irks me when certain obvious weapons (often automated) are completely ignored in sci-fi, in favour of keeping outmoded and often technologically incongrous systems simply because it involves humans.