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How do?

So. There’s something that has always irked me about major space battles in Star Wars.

Why is it that during Scarrif and Endor, the Rebel fleet brings GR-75 transports into battle?

I mean, seriously. They’re not armed worth a damn. So why are they there? Fire ships don’t seem the Rebel style. At all.

Anyone?

That's what bothers you about Star Wars Space battles? Not the zero range lasers? Or aerobatic maneuvering by fighters? Or...fire in space? Or actual windows as forward viewports or...

Ok, I love Star Wars as well. Sadly, I don't have an answer besides, like above, the people making the movies know zippo about or take the time to worry about, actual military concepts for the battles...

Although, i guess if you are going to claim starships in a space battle could be so close as to run into each other (Sigh, because space is so small...) you could be boarding maybe...

edwardmyst wrote:
Or actual windows as forward viewports or...

In the old EU it was referred to as transparisteel.

Yeah. Starwars isnt sci fi. Its fantasy in space that is about samurai wizards from the future past. There is no good reason why anything happens in sw.

In the X-Wing mini game the battle worthy ones are tricked out with comms, slicers and other support gubbins like modern times AWACS, but thats equally one of my first world bugbears, stuff being explained outside the media in question as in Empire they are only referred to as transports and need the bewb nipple cannon to get clear

 Lance845 wrote:
Yeah. Starwars isnt sci fi. Its fantasy in space that is about samurai wizards from the future past. There is no good reason why anything happens in sw.

The EU spent a long long time trying to force good reasons into existence. Realizing the order of that particular chicken and egg has greatly improved my enjoyment of the new stuff.

I always got the impression that the tech in SW was so advanced and common-place that for story telling purposes, it doesn't matter how it works, just that it does

Rather than being new tech that the galaxy is just realizing, it's been around for thousands of years, basically functioning the same as magic in Fantasy tropes. Hence SW is best described as Sci-Fantasy

-

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
How do?

So. There’s something that has always irked me about major space battles in Star Wars.

Why is it that during Scarrif and Endor, the Rebel fleet brings GR-75 transports into battle?

I mean, seriously. They’re not armed worth a damn. So why are they there? Fire ships don’t seem the Rebel style. At all.

Anyone?

Easy. They're the models they had on hand and no one knew or cared that according to some fanbook somewhere they were supposed to be transports.
They're ship models they had on hand to fill out the climatic fleet battle at the end of the trilogy.


Like a lot of films, a tiny portion of the fanbase cares a lot more about trivial details than the movie-makers do.
I can't see this question even being asked outside a sci-fantasy themed internet forum.

Perhaps they have portholes for troops to shoot out of smaller weapons that are effective against fighters.

 Galef wrote:
I always got the impression that the tech in SW was so advanced and common-place that for story telling purposes, it doesn't matter how it works, just that it does

Rather than being new tech that the galaxy is just realizing, it's been around for thousands of years, basically functioning the same as magic in Fantasy tropes. Hence SW is best described as Sci-Fantasy

-

The thing with the sci is that it has to be based on some kind of science. The technology of ballista exist in fantasy, but the magic is just nonsense. In sw its not just the magic thats nonsense. Its ALSO the tech. You can call it sci-fantasy if you want. But its JUST fantasy in actuality.

 Lance845 wrote:

The thing with the sci is that it has to be based on some kind of science. The technology of ballista exist in fantasy, but the magic is just nonsense. In sw its not just the magic thats nonsense. Its ALSO the tech. You can call it sci-fantasy if you want. But its JUST fantasy in actuality.

Which is fine, but Science Fantasy is still the name used for that genre.

While I'm sure we could come up with a dozen different reasons for the ships...the reality is they're probably the red-shirts of the battle. Brought along simply to (for example: Rogue One...) crash into Star Destroyers or be blown up.

A more logical explanation?

-Communications support
-Battlefield salvage (maybe?)
-Q-ships? (secretly packing firepower)
-Actually used to go down onto the planet to pick up the rebels, etc.
-Electronic warfare (maybe scrambling stuff or somehow protecting/defeating proton torpedoes in the way a modern destroyer screens for subs and cruise missiles?)
-etc.

I don't think many of these are canon outside of the Star Wars Armada tabletop game, but there "could" be plenty of justification.

Or simply that, as useless as they are, they're all that the rebels have, and when you're going up against Star Destroyers they have to throw everything they have against them.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
How do?

So. There’s something that has always irked me about major space battles in Star Wars.

Why is it that during Scarrif and Endor, the Rebel fleet brings GR-75 transports into battle?

I mean, seriously. They’re not armed worth a damn. So why are they there? Fire ships don’t seem the Rebel style. At all.

Anyone?

This has been discussed to death. There are even YouTube videos about it. There seems to be two schools of thought justifying it.

1) Since the ships are armed (very lightly even for their size, but still armed), some ship is better than no ship and the Rebellion is pretty desperate for hulls.

2) There simply was no other place to stash them where they would be safe without an escort, and the Rebels couldn't spare an escort for them.

And in the end, there's a LOT more unrealistic things in these battles than deliberately bringing the SW equivalent of Liberty Ships into a surface action.

Also option 3 - what they're transporting are the ground forces, or at least their support equipment, and they thought those would be needed.

At Scarif, they might have believed they'd be able to get a larger force through the shield gate before it was raised. At Endor, supplementary material has shown there were quite a few ground conflicts on the planet during & after the battle in space.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
How do?

So. There’s something that has always irked me about major space battles in Star Wars.

Why is it that during Scarrif and Endor, the Rebel fleet brings GR-75 transports into battle?

I mean, seriously. They’re not armed worth a damn. So why are they there? Fire ships don’t seem the Rebel style. At all.

Anyone?

They could be fleet support vessels, marine transports, cobbled together ECM/AWACS equivalent ships, converted "make do" ad-hoc warships, etc? A Fire Ship actually doesn't seem all that out of character either.

Mostly, I'm guessing because they had the ship models, they looked cool, didn't really have all that much backstory on them fleshed out yet to get into conundrums over, and they fit the scene.

It's certainly not as awkward an issue as say, arcing TLJ lasers, the near complete reliance on close range WW2 style dogfights, or why Luke kept the Skywalker name after being secreted away back to Tatooine to hide from Anakin turned Vader

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
How do?

So. There’s something that has always irked me about major space battles in Star Wars.

Why is it that during Scarrif and Endor, the Rebel fleet brings GR-75 transports into battle?

I mean, seriously. They’re not armed worth a damn. So why are they there? Fire ships don’t seem the Rebel style. At all.

Anyone?

Presumably they are carrying ground troops. Or have been retrofitted with hanger bays to carry some fighters. Or are just hauling extra supplies. Or they've been retrofitted with some additional firepower and shields so they can actually fight, the rebellion would be desperately short of ships.

The naval battles of WW2 had plenty of ships present that had no business in an actual warzone. Every fleet has supply vessels following it around.

Of course, if you knew you were jumping straight into combat supply ships would be best kept in the rear or wait till the battle was over. But troop transports and any ships retrofitted for combat would be present.

 Lance845 wrote:

 Galef wrote:
I always got the impression that the tech in SW was so advanced and common-place that for story telling purposes, it doesn't matter how it works, just that it does

Rather than being new tech that the galaxy is just realizing, it's been around for thousands of years, basically functioning the same as magic in Fantasy tropes. Hence SW is best described as Sci-Fantasy

-

The thing with the sci is that it has to be based on some kind of science. The technology of ballista exist in fantasy, but the magic is just nonsense. In sw its not just the magic thats nonsense. Its ALSO the tech. You can call it sci-fantasy if you want. But its JUST fantasy in actuality.

Wrong way of parsing it. The 'sci' is just there to indicate that it will be dealing with lasers and spaceships rather than swords and bows. It isn't a matter of treating anything like its proper science. Even people who believe things like star trek or whatever are more high-brow shouldn't really believe that its real 'science' fiction. Elsewise the genre would be pretty limited to 40 year sleeper ships and nukes as the weapon of choice for space warfare.

Very little of the 'science fiction' genre is actually science based, but the sci-fantasy stuff doesn't even try. The tech and the 'science' behind it doesn't matter at all.

 Vaktathi wrote:
why Luke kept the Skywalker name after being secreted away back to Tatooine to hide from Anakin turned Vader

That one's easy. Obi-Wan set him up as bait to see if Anakin would come after his son. Instead, Palpatine lied to Anakin so he never thought to look.

The bait theory doesn't make much sense, since there never would have been any reason for Anakin to look on Tatoinne anyway.

The theory I like is that they didn't change Luke's name because there wasn't any real reason to do so - Anakin hated Tatoinne, so was unlikely to go there himself. Tatoinne wasn't part of the Republic, and the outer rim was of negligible interest to the Empire as it evolved. With Skywalker supposedly being a fairly normal local name, it was unlikely to attract notice.

The long view then becomes that few people in the galaxy would know that Anakin Skywalker was Darth Vader. Those who did know the name would know him as a hero of the Clone Wars... So when Luke grew up and Obi Wan steered him towards the Rebellion, that name was going to be useful.


Of course, the 'real' answer is simply that when the first movie was written, Vader and Anakin were two different people, and Lucas created a bit of a plot hole when he decided to make Vader Luke's father while Empire was in production...

They are for space tourists who want to see a real live space battle, and its all according to the Emperors design...

"Vader! I told you to NOT BLOW UP THE TOURISTS!!! They bring in money for all these space ships! Next time, you'll be on the sidelines, spending some quality time with your Son and should keep you out of - "

"I HAVE A SON? WHY, THIS WONDERFUL NEWS!"

"...sigh, me and my big mouth..."

 insaniak wrote:
The bait theory doesn't make much sense, since there never would have been any reason for Anakin to look on Tatoinne anyway.

Fair point.

Also worth noting that it may not have been Obi Wan's choice anyway. He may very well have suggested to Owen and Beru that they change the kid's name, but they didn't for whatever reason. Not least because Owen just didn't care much for Obi Wan's opinion.

I always found how they worked in the Lars family in the prequels to be odd. Lucas didn't do a great job of that part especially. They BARELY interact with Anakin at all other than "Hi. I'm your step-bro." 5 minutes later. "Oh mom's dead? That sucks. oh you're leaving now? Ok bye."

Certainly not to the level that Uncle Owen's behavior in ANH would suggest. It implies that there was at least a fairly long term, if terse, relationship between Anakin and Owen. Logically, with the backstory that got created by the Prequels, the story they told Luke would have been "You're dad died in the war and his old war buddy dumped you here with us because we're your only family. Only ever met him once."

You also would expect them to have mentioned his mom since the one time they met Anakin she was with him.

Of course this isn't the case because the movies weren't made in this order, but it was a major mistake to have Padme be there in the meeting.

There is also little justification for animosity between Obi-wan and Owen. Again, they didn't really interact beyond Obi-wan dumping Luke with them.

Reckon we might see that developed in the forthcoming Obi-Wan series.

Dare say a slice of it will be relating to Sand People striking back following Anakin’s little massacre.

Given he killed the entire tribe I doubt any sand people would exist that hold a grudge. It’s not like rival tribes would care.

I dunno. We don’t have a great deal of info on how they operate.

Tribes could intermarry for sake of the gene pool. It could be that once a given tribe gets big enough to challenge its available resources, they split in some way.

If it’s matriarchal, then a ‘Queen’ could depart with a group to found a new tribe. If Patriarchal, could be the eldest son does the same.

There’s definitely room in the narrative for such.

Possibly. But given how real world tribal societies have been observed to operate the number of individuals who might be offended by Anakin's actions would be quite small. The disunity of tribal societies is their major weakness when faced with an outside opponent. The rivals of any tribe that got attacked/wiped out would be quite happy with the turn of events, even if the perpetrators of the slaughter would be just as likely to attack them as well.

The few Sand People who might want revenge would also have to know that Anakin came from the Lar's homestead and connect the two together. The likelihood of any of them seeing that/finding out would be extremely unlikely. Especially since Anakin was never seen in the area before or after the incident.

Even without links between tribes, though, the other nearby tribes could easily take the slaughter of an entire camp as a sign that the people sharing their planet are actively trying to wipe them out, particularly if, say, an opportunistic warlord were to rise up and use that propaganda to unite a bunch of tribes and start purging farms and small towns.


Exactly the sort of threat a jedi in hiding might need to jump in and help out with, particularly when the kid he's looking out for is at risk.

Yup.

I mean, it’s unlikely to come up, but the plot seed is there.