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The loss of the second Deathstar and the Emperor at the same time broke the Imperium - don't forget at that point in time the council was dissolved to each region of space was ruling itself. With the intent that what would keep them in line was the threat of having their worlds blown apart and the swift intervention of the Imperial fleet.
Also a point that isn't really shown in the film all that much (and confused by the clone wars) is that by that point the Stormtroopers were mostly local recruits rather than conditioned from birth clones. With the vast distances in space chances are local Imperial forces were more likely to defect to local governance rather than remain under the yoke of the Imperial control - esp since that control was now shattered.

We can assume also that the Deathstart 2 and the main fleet with its Super Star Destroyer and other key ships, also contained many of the upper ranks of the Imperial hierarchy. Don't forget Vader was also lost during that battle. So chances are there were loads of potential power struggles from more minor generals and leaders that likely helped fragment the whole Imperial force.

The Imperial Navy (canonically) had over 25,000 Imperial-class Star Destroyers alone, not including other classes of vessel, so I wouldn't necessarily say that the loss at Endor was really a factor so much as it was the loss of Palpatine himself who basically held Imperial rule together through sheer willpower, dark side devilry, and terror.

When you think about it 25,000 is a very tiny number for a whole Galaxy. Even half if you only include the more core regions its still a very small force. It certainly relied upon a fear system and also a hierarchy.

One which they lost entirely. Emperor, Vader, most of the higher command. Basically like many empires once the head of the hydra was cut off it likely splintered up into subfactions. A local system might not be able to overthrow 25,000 Star Destroyers (and support ships); but they could overthrow the two or three in their system. Or perhaps the captains of those ships defect or even try to rebuild the Empire in their own vision (which might or might not align with others).

Thats 25,000 of a single type of ship - that doesn't include Victory-class, Tector-class, Secutor-class, Interdictor-class, Qaz-class, Onager-class, etc. Nor does it account for the countless smaller vessels in Imperial service such as Immobilizer 418s, IGV-55s, Arrestor/Cantwell-class cruisers, Carrack-class light cruisers, Arquitens-class light cruisers, Gozanti-class cruisers, Quasar Fire-class cruiser carriers, Raider-class corvettes, Razor-class frigates, Dreadnought-class heavy cruisers, CR-90s corvettes, etc. etc. etc. Not to mention the legacy vessels inherited from the Republic such as the Venator-class.

We don't have numbers on those, BUT, we do know from various canon publications that it was more or less unheard of for an officers first command to be an Imperial-class, and that commanding an Imperial-class was also considered a great honor and point of pride. I.E. - officers had to work their way up and earn that right, usually over progressively larger and larger vessels. If we assume that the Empire was a pyramidal hierarchy like most bureaucracies and militaries are, then that means there were likely severa hundreds of thousands or evenl millions of other vessels in the Imperial Navy.

If you assume, for a moment, that Imperial Star Destroyers hold the same place in the Imperial Navy that Aircraft Carriers do in the US Navy (which may be a faulty assumption given the existence of Super Star Destroyers, but I consider those to more or less be "superweapon" tier weapon and thus not something analogous to anything that exists in the real world), and that the ratio of Imperial-class Star Destroyer to other vessels is the same as the ratio of Aircraft Carriers to non-Aircraft carriers (10 Aircraft Carriers to about 222 other combat vessels - not including support vessels), then the Imperial Navy would have an additional 555,000 combat vessels in service.

Is it still a small number? Yes. But its not insignificant,and its foolish to think the entire high command of such a large force was present aboard the 2nd Death Star and the 40 or so Star Destroyers present at Endor.

No but it's been described in several sources that the Executor was seen as a dream position for most officers, so when it went down, it took most of the brightest and/or those who showed the most initiative. Endor crippled the Empire by taking out the cream of their crop, and then it was down to dozens of smaller engagements with the leftovers who needed regular direction from Fleet Command to work at their best, or else they got lazy or would defect- both things which probably immediately began happening (or at least they did in the old EU).

But still, I can see that there should have easily been just as many large ground engagements around the galaxy as there were fleet engagements behind the scenes between the original movies.

Remember, Epic gaming doesn't have to have thousands of troops and hundreds of tanks on the table-that is just GW sales mentality talking. A battle the size of Hoth or larger would be great fodder for 6 or 10mm Epic gaming, where AT-ATs and AT-STs can be fielded in numbers larger than "1" each, and fighter craft (especially those like Star Wars has that can slow down incredibly to attack ground targets) can move about the battlefield without just screaming in one edge and then out the other in one turn.

The snowspeeders on Hoth especially were adapted for the cold- meaning they had been used in temperate climates by the Rebel Alliance before.

There were 12 other (known) Executor-class Star Destroyers besides the Executor itself. Unless serving under Vader is what made it a dream position (which I doubt given his penchant for killing his reports, besides that I would imagine serving aboard the Emperors own Executor-class, the Eclipse, would be even more of a dream in that case), I would assume that the "cream of the crop" would have been spread out across the ships of the class rather than concentrated on the one.

chaos0xomega wrote:
There were 12 other (known) Executor-class Star Destroyers besides the Executor itself. Unless serving under Vader is what made it a dream position (which I doubt given his penchant for killing his reports, besides that I would imagine serving aboard the Emperors own Executor-class, the Eclipse, would be even more of a dream in that case), I would assume that the "cream of the crop" would have been spread out across the ships of the class rather than concentrated on the one.

And how many of those would have been aboard all the ships at Endor?

And how many of those not there would not have seen it as their opportunity to cut out a fiefdom of their own after hearing of the Emperor's death?

The Emperor was a glue in meany ways, from a special battle meditation that he employed that fell apart with this death, to the political glue that required him to be alive to hold everything together.

And how many of those would have been aboard all the ships at Endor?

None.

And how many of those not there would not have seen it as their opportunity to cut out a fiefdom of their own after hearing of the Emperor's death?

That we know of, none. Two of them surrendered, the rest remained loyal and were destroyed, captured, or escaped to the Unknown Regions.

Lets not forget that inside of the film alone its presented that most of the Imperial core fleet is at the Endor battle and they lose. The idea of there being 12 other Super Star Destroyers is never ever presented in the film itself.

The vast majority of fans only see the films - perhaps some of the TV shows and might have heard that books exist somewhere. The EU material (legal or not according to Disney) is basically unknown to a large number of people would would consider themselves starwars fans; even of that number many might never have read any of the comics either.

“There are a lot of command ships.” Sounds to me like it’s reasonable to assume there are at least 4 or 5. A dozen is even better.

You also have to consider what impact light-speed-travel would have on logistics and intimidation. You don't need Star Destroyers anchored around every planet you're trying to control. A reasonable world-wide garrison with the ability to have a Star Destroyer "arrive" within an hour or two (or less?) from distant space is a big deal.

The threat of a Star Destroyer and other Empire war machines suddenly appearing would be enough to keep anyone in line if they're not hard core supporters of the rebel cause.

Reaction speed and willingness to use said reaction. Blowing up planets is a huge thing, the Empire using the Deathstart to destroy a world for purely political reasons and as a weapons test - is a very clear sign that they will use it even for exceptionally light transgressions.

With high speed of travel too it means that even if multiple worlds wanted to rise up, they likely couldn't achieve it. Even colluding with rebels could get their world destroyed. That's a massive threat - even the Rebels were hard pressed to evacuate and they are a rebellion group on the run with limited numbers and enough ships to move them all; a whole world would never manage to get together such resources without bing spotted.

 Overread wrote:
Lets not forget that inside of the film alone its presented that most of the Imperial core fleet is at the Endor battle and they lose. The idea of there being 12 other Super Star Destroyers is never ever presented in the film itself.

Which is irrelevant because the canon is more than just the contents of the films, and the games we are discussing here extend well beyond the scope of the films as well.

chaos0xomega wrote:

And how many of those would have been aboard all the ships at Endor?

None.

First off, evidence?

Second, the culmination of a huge operation to sucker in the biggest portion of the Rebel Alliance and smash it and absolutely NONE of the best were there to witness it? Especially when you would be counting on the effectiveness of one of the best fleets gathered by Vader to hold them in place while they are crushed? Please.

Palpatine was a politician to his toenails, and quite possibly the most effective one the Republic had ever seen. One thing that a politician would embrace is a scene demonstrating the fullness of his power, especially a SITH politician. The idea that he wouldn't have had at least some of his best military officers there to witness it? I'll need a reference to that happening.

chaos0xomega wrote:

And how many of those not there would not have seen it as their opportunity to cut out a fiefdom of their own after hearing of the Emperor's death?

That we know of, none. Two of them surrendered, the rest remained loyal and were destroyed, captured, or escaped to the Unknown Regions.

Reference please? Destroyed and capturing them would have happened after Endor and before Rey flew off Jakku. That's a LOT of time to work with. Legends was replete with them.

Remember Palpatine restructured the Republic in to the Empire, and doing so put regional governors in charge who had a pentiant for using cruelty to enforce the will of the Empire. That type of personality would hardly be so quick to bow down to another without a fight or to flee to what is considered the back woods without good reason.

 Charistoph wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

And how many of those not there would not have seen it as their opportunity to cut out a fiefdom of their own after hearing of the Emperor's death?

That we know of, none. Two of them surrendered, the rest remained loyal and were destroyed, captured, or escaped to the Unknown Regions.

Reference please? Destroyed and capturing them would have happened after Endor and before Rey flew off Jakku. That's a LOT of time to work with. Legends was replete with them.

Remember Palpatine restructured the Republic in to the Empire, and doing so put regional governors in charge who had a pentiant for using cruelty to enforce the will of the Empire. That type of personality would hardly be so quick to bow down to another without a fight or to flee to what is considered the back woods without good reason.

Except in the new Canon all of that took place over the course of a year due to "Operation Cinder", basically Palpatine's Scorched Earth policy. Majority of Imperial assets, including Star Destroyers and the rest of the Imperial Navy, destroyed or sent off to the Unknown Regions, in one year. See Aftermath trilogy of books and the new Battlefront 2 game.

We do see some leftovers still existing in The Mandalorian though.

 Charistoph wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

And how many of those would have been aboard all the ships at Endor?

None.

First off, evidence?

Second, the culmination of a huge operation to sucker in the biggest portion of the Rebel Alliance and smash it and absolutely NONE of the best were there to witness it? Especially when you would be counting on the effectiveness of one of the best fleets gathered by Vader to hold them in place while they are crushed? Please.

Palpatine was a politician to his toenails, and quite possibly the most effective one the Republic had ever seen. One thing that a politician would embrace is a scene demonstrating the fullness of his power, especially a SITH politician. The idea that he wouldn't have had at least some of his best military officers there to witness it? I'll need a reference to that happening.

The fact that there are 25,000 Imperial-class Star Destroyers, 13 known Executor-class Star Destroyers, and an unknown number of other ships of various classes in the Imperial Navy, yet only one Executor-class, 30 or so Imperial-class, 1 Tector-class, 1 Raider-class corvette, and 1 Battelcruiser of unknown class were present at Endor should be all the evidence you need.

I didn't say "none of the best" were there to witness it. I said that its foolish to assume that the entirety of the Imperial military leadership and high command was present at the battle when more than 99% of the Imperial Navy is engaged in operations elsewhere. On that note, I can say that canonically the Emperors political 2iC - Grand Vizier Mas Amedda - was on Coruscant at the time of the battle, and obviously survived as a result (and if you need further confirmation just look up who signed the Galactic Concordance with the New Republic about a year later). Likewise, the majority of the Imperial political-military leadership (Moffs and Grand-Moffs) were likewise not present at Endor - only a single Moff (out of the 20 in the Empire) was present (Jerjerrod) and no Grand Moffs (of which there are about 4 or 5, at least as far as is known), which makes sense since only a single Moff (and possibly Grand Moff) would have had jurisdiction over the region. There was not a single Grand Admiral present at the Battle of Endor (there were typically twelve serving at any given time), and only a single Fleet Admiral (Piett) - who was the highest ranking officer present. These are the highest two ranks in the Imperial Navy, and you better believe that in a Navy composed of tens of thousands - if not hundreds of thousands or millions - of vessels that there are quite a few Fleet Admirals kicking around, at the very least you would expect there to be more Fleet Admirals than Grand Admirals.

Reference please? Destroyed and capturing them would have happened after Endor and before Rey flew off Jakku. That's a LOT of time to work with. Legends was replete with them.

Remember Palpatine restructured the Republic in to the Empire, and doing so put regional governors in charge who had a pentiant for using cruelty to enforce the will of the Empire. That type of personality would hardly be so quick to bow down to another without a fight or to flee to what is considered the back woods without good reason.

Read Aftermath: Life Debt. Grand Admiral Rae Sloane estimates that the Empire had a total of 13 Super Star Destroyers in service before the destruction of the 2nd Death Star (the actual number is a secret unknown even to high ranking Imperial Navy personnel such as herself). Of those we know the following:

Executor - Destroyed at Endor
Annihilator - Captured by Pirates (after Endor), renamed Liberty's Misrule
Arbitrator - Destroyed (after Endor) by a miscalculated hyperspace jump that caused it to be pulled into a black hole
Eclipse - Believed to have been destroyed (after Endor) but Sloane discovered inconsistencies in the records which led her to believe that the ship had disappeared instead, it was later discovered to actually be hiding in the Unknown Regions
Ravager - Considered to be the "last known remaining Super Star Destroyer" by the time of the Battle of Jakku, was destroyed at the battle (Rey flies the Falcon through its wreckage in TFA)

In addition to those 5 named ships, Sloane determines from reviewing fleet registers and Imperial records that the New Republic had captured 3 unnamed Super Star Destroyers (2 surrendered, 1 stolen by Republic operatives while it was docked at Kuat for repairs), and destroyed another 5 unnamed super star destroyers in combat, which accounts for all 13 believed to have been in existence. Its possible there were more (which would only really further reinforce my argument as to the strength of the Empire and the presence of senior leadership away from Endor), but not less. All of this occurred between Endor and Jakku.

Arcanis161 wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

And how many of those not there would not have seen it as their opportunity to cut out a fiefdom of their own after hearing of the Emperor's death?

That we know of, none. Two of them surrendered, the rest remained loyal and were destroyed, captured, or escaped to the Unknown Regions.

Reference please? Destroyed and capturing them would have happened after Endor and before Rey flew off Jakku. That's a LOT of time to work with. Legends was replete with them.

Remember Palpatine restructured the Republic in to the Empire, and doing so put regional governors in charge who had a pentiant for using cruelty to enforce the will of the Empire. That type of personality would hardly be so quick to bow down to another without a fight or to flee to what is considered the back woods without good reason.

Except in the new Canon all of that took place over the course of a year due to "Operation Cinder", basically Palpatine's Scorched Earth policy. Majority of Imperial assets, including Star Destroyers and the rest of the Imperial Navy, destroyed or sent off to the Unknown Regions, in one year. See Aftermath trilogy of books and the new Battlefront 2 game.

We do see some leftovers still existing in The Mandalorian though.

Too bad you need to have played an EA game to even be aware of Operation Cinder instead of proper writing in the movie. Even then, a year was a horrible setup for ending the Empire. Legends did it far better in taking 5 years after Endor for the New Republic to take just Coruscant and the Empire falling with the same results as Alexander's realm. A lot of the Disney form is fairly unbelievable when you have backstabbers around every corner, they all suddenly seem to cooperate with the death of the Emperor.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

And how many of those would have been aboard all the ships at Endor?

None.

First off, evidence?

Second, the culmination of a huge operation to sucker in the biggest portion of the Rebel Alliance and smash it and absolutely NONE of the best were there to witness it? Especially when you would be counting on the effectiveness of one of the best fleets gathered by Vader to hold them in place while they are crushed? Please.

Palpatine was a politician to his toenails, and quite possibly the most effective one the Republic had ever seen. One thing that a politician would embrace is a scene demonstrating the fullness of his power, especially a SITH politician. The idea that he wouldn't have had at least some of his best military officers there to witness it? I'll need a reference to that happening.

The fact that there are 25,000 Imperial-class Star Destroyers, 13 known Executor-class Star Destroyers, and an unknown number of other ships of various classes in the Imperial Navy, yet only one Executor-class, 30 or so Imperial-class, 1 Tector-class, 1 Raider-class corvette, and 1 Battelcruiser of unknown class were present at Endor should be all the evidence you need.

I didn't say "none of the best" were there to witness it. I said that its foolish to assume that the entirety of the Imperial military leadership and high command was present at the battle when more than 99% of the Imperial Navy is engaged in operations elsewhere. On that note, I can say that canonically the Emperors political 2iC - Grand Vizier Mas Amedda - was on Coruscant at the time of the battle, and obviously survived as a result (and if you need further confirmation just look up who signed the Galactic Concordance with the New Republic about a year later). Likewise, the majority of the Imperial political-military leadership (Moffs and Grand-Moffs) were likewise not present at Endor - only a single Moff (out of the 20 in the Empire) was present (Jerjerrod) and no Grand Moffs (of which there are about 4 or 5, at least as far as is known), which makes sense since only a single Moff (and possibly Grand Moff) would have had jurisdiction over the region. There was not a single Grand Admiral present at the Battle of Endor (there were typically twelve serving at any given time), and only a single Fleet Admiral (Piett) - who was the highest ranking officer present. These are the highest two ranks in the Imperial Navy, and you better believe that in a Navy composed of tens of thousands - if not hundreds of thousands or millions - of vessels that there are quite a few Fleet Admirals kicking around, at the very least you would expect there to be more Fleet Admirals than Grand Admirals.

Since that was my question, you did answer as "none of the best".

chaos0xomega wrote:

Reference please? Destroyed and capturing them would have happened after Endor and before Rey flew off Jakku. That's a LOT of time to work with. Legends was replete with them.

Remember Palpatine restructured the Republic in to the Empire, and doing so put regional governors in charge who had a pentiant for using cruelty to enforce the will of the Empire. That type of personality would hardly be so quick to bow down to another without a fight or to flee to what is considered the back woods without good reason.

Read Aftermath: Life Debt. Grand Admiral Rae Sloane estimates that the Empire had a total of 13 Super Star Destroyers in service before the destruction of the 2nd Death Star (the actual number is a secret unknown even to high ranking Imperial Navy personnel such as herself). Of those we know the following:

Executor - Destroyed at Endor
Annihilator - Captured by Pirates (after Endor), renamed Liberty's Misrule
Arbitrator - Destroyed (after Endor) by a miscalculated hyperspace jump that caused it to be pulled into a black hole
Eclipse - Believed to have been destroyed (after Endor) but Sloane discovered inconsistencies in the records which led her to believe that the ship had disappeared instead, it was later discovered to actually be hiding in the Unknown Regions
Ravager - Considered to be the "last known remaining Super Star Destroyer" by the time of the Battle of Jakku, was destroyed at the battle (Rey flies the Falcon through its wreckage in TFA)

In addition to those 5 named ships, Sloane determines from reviewing fleet registers and Imperial records that the New Republic had captured 3 unnamed Super Star Destroyers (2 surrendered, 1 stolen by Republic operatives while it was docked at Kuat for repairs), and destroyed another 5 unnamed super star destroyers in combat, which accounts for all 13 believed to have been in existence. Its possible there were more (which would only really further reinforce my argument as to the strength of the Empire and the presence of senior leadership away from Endor), but not less. All of this occurred between Endor and Jakku.

Thank you for the references. Unfortunately, none of that is really told in the movies, now is it? That is a large part of the problem, and a huge part of the deficiencies in the writing of the new canon. Legends actually did this one far better, imo.

99.9% of Legends content was from outside the films (and just about everything I wrote with regards to canon was also true in Legends), so Im not really sure I understand whst argument you are trying to make.

Just going back to the OP, I'd just like to say that Horizon Wars would be a really good starting point for 6mm company-level battles in the SW universe. In fact, I have appropriately-scaled Micro Machines toys and X-Wing minis in my collection and a few even make an appearance in the latest supplement, Over the Horizon.

Over the Horizon even includes some special HQ choices that were designed for steampunk games but which could easily turn to SW: Big Game Hunter = Mandalorian; Mad Scientist = Sith Lord; Dark Priest = Grey Jedi etc.