10 Ships That Could Have Saved The Empire | Star Wars Theory

the thing is, you did not even need a death star to annihilate a planet, a single ISD could glass an entire planet in a few days with its turbo lasers alone, when cranked up to full power, isd turbo lasers are about as destructive as a barrage of tactical nukes, without the radioactive fallout.

Something you should have added about the Venator is the comparison of point defenses. The venator had 52 point defense batteries, which, when facing off against a force that is primarily made of small craft, would have done way more than focusing on larger weapons that the ISDs had

Ignoring the Victory-2 Star Destroyer was one of the Empire’s greatest errors. A well armed fairly speedy star destroyer that costed 1/3rd the price of the ISD and was designed to operate in tandem with Venator and Arquitens as a capital ship. Theres also the Secutor, which is effectively a Venator that fixes its survivability issues, which was sidelined for the ISD family. And then theres the Ton Falk, which is a star destroyers hangar with engines and some quad lasers.

The artificial inflation of crew sizes by the Empire is known to be intended so that as many civilians as possible are directly employed by the Empire and involved in its defense. This serves the dual purposes of keeping the Imperial economy a closed circuit, and reducing the likelihood of rebellion in civilian populations due to the fact that their own people are taking part in protecting the Empire. Overall, I think you've done a good job of highlighting and explaining many of the ships that the Empire underused or misused. The only ships I really would add are the Carrack cruiser and the Lancer corvette. Granted, both could use refitting, the Lancer in particular being a little slow. If nothing else, the Empire could certainly use the Corellian CR90/CR92 and DP20 in conjunction with the Raider corvette.

I wouldn't say the empire had it completely wrong, An ISD (especially in legends) is easily able to hold its own in a fight. What they missed is a combined ships strategy, A single ISD with a small fleet of smaller cruisers, DHC's, Arquitens or VSD's and few carriers like the Venator or the Ton Falk. It isn't a lumbering ship, it is just misused.

The Acclamator I and II would have been excellent patrol and pocket Star Destroyers, since they were multirole heavy frigates and had Class 1 Hyperdrives, as well as a decently large weapons suite for both light and heavy combat, and can be kitted out for troop transport and carrier roles.

Don't limit yourself to Disney Canon. The Empire had its own version of the Corellian Corvette in Legends, called the CR92A Assassin class Corvette. Other lighter roles were filled by the Carrack Cruiser, Lancer class Frigate, Strike class Cruiser, and a few more obscure ships (mainly from Comics) like the Imperial-II class Frigate.

This video is EXTREMELY well done! Hope you blow up in subscribers. Info quality is definitely up there with Ekharts Ladder.

Don't forget the TIE Defender, a starfighter more than match for any Rebel or Pirate fighter.

Vindicator Class Heavy Cruiser, more interdictor class, Tie Hunter, Nebulon B2, several of the game ships basically. The assault transport and normal transport from the X-wing/Tie Fighter PC game series come to mind.

I think a lot of people forget about one big advantage the Nebulon B escort frigate had over a lot of these designs: it was a ship with a relatively low cost, that was fairly fast, maneuverable, had quite effective sensors and ECM systems, well armed, armored, and shielded that could easily act as a pocket fighter or other support ship carrier and repair or maintenance facility. More importantly, it had a big advantage that seldom gets mentioned: the empire already tons of them, as the ship design dated from the late republic period, and was still being actively produced until fairly late in the empire's history, and many of it's component parts were already widely found on other craft already in service, meaning they were relatively cheap and easy to repair modify, or return to active service. In it's default configuration, it was also quite well suited for anti fighter, anti corvette, and anti smaller frigate operations, being equipped with a dozen fairly powerful for the ship's size and powerplant turbolaser cannon turrets, another dozen rapid fire laser cannon turrets capable of acting as dedicated anti fighter/ point defense lasers, a pair of capital ship scale concussion missile launcher tubes, and two extremely powerful and accurate tractor beams. The ship also had repulsor lift engines allowing it to function far more effectively in in atmosphere or near atmosphere conditions, as well as a hangar that could carry up to 24 TIE advanced sized or smaller fighter craft, plus a pair of sentinel or lambda class landing shuttles. Exterior docking collars at several points on the ship allowed it to let corvettes, light freighters, and certain other craft dock and even catch rides for transportation, as well as the direct connection of specialty equipment modular cargo or crewspace containers, and more. The ships were also designed with the capacity for long term patrols away from a support base specifically in mind, with many having ample on board storage availabity for food, water, spare parts, and more. A number of Nebulon b Escort frigates in both imperial and rebel alliance service were modified for roles as diverse as bulk troop transports, systems patrol and interdiction craft, mobile medical or sattelite and ECM support vessels, and more. It's also worth noting that the sheer maneuverability and speed at sublight of the craft for frigates allowed Nebulon B frigates used by the rebel alliance to work in groups of two or four ships, to directly counter imperial star destroyers just with their onboard weapons. Some Nebulon B frigates were even used to tow small space stations and orbital defense platforms like the Gollan II into place. Even brand new, the empire could buy or build between 17-23 Nebulon B escort frigates for the cost of one imperial star destroyer depending upon the specific type. It was in many ways pretty much the perfect craft for an empire that needed a cost effective, efficient, multi role capable vessel that could fulfill a wide variety of missions effectively. And instead the empire largely retired them early in favor of imperial I and II star destroyers or a wide variety of fairly cost prohibitive far to limited in number, and absurdly specialized corvette and frigate designs. The rebel allianceironically because of that was quite well position to literally steal, or in some cases directly buy mothballed Nebulon B frigates out of various used ship or scrapyards, and made very effective use of them against the empire.

The terror of seeing 1 victory-2, a venator, 2 interdictor and 3-4 arquilen or Raider plus escort could have easily being terifying in the idea how can you defeat such good balance fleet. The early rebel alliance fleet we see during rogue one would have possibly be screw the moment they arrived. All this would be close to or a little over 2 ISD class and would be more cost effective for the lessent number of loss.

Great breakdown! I especially love the inclusion of the Gladiator in the list. I run a Star Wars roleplaying game with my friends. They don't have a ton of respect for the ISD, as they can deal with it's limited TIE complement, and then get in close with corvettes and snubfighters where its lack of point defense weapons becomes fatal. The Gladiator, though, despite being smaller and less armed, terrifies them, with plenty of point defenses and a seemingly endless amount of fighters pouring out of it. It's one of my favorite star destroyer designs, and I'm always happy to see it included.

Surprised to not see the Lancer class frigate on this list, I guess it hasn't made the jump to the new cannon? It was pretty much a hard counter to the rebels' reliance on fighters and if I remember right some of the Rogues figured the only reason it didn't save the empire was that too few came in to service to late to salvage things. Adding a few of them as an escort to a fleet along side a CAP of TIEs pretty much eliminated "Trench Run Syndrome".

I agree, the Empire's downfall was in not incorporating smaller, faster support vessels with their ISD main ships. Yes, am ISD might deter a planet or system to stop their rebellious people, but if each ship came with a slew of support ships that acted as pickets to the larger vessels, they could have lasted longer. Venators, Carrack cruisers and the like could have been a better alternative to the just build big doctrine.

I personally really like the Vigil Corvette for the empire 255 meters long, class 2 hyperdrive a few hundred crew and costs a couple million credits with a pair of twin heavy turbolasers and half a dozen laser cannons plus a tractor beam, not offical info but in empire at war they can also carry a few tie fighters aswell.

The New Republic's Nebulon Class Star Destroyer. If the Empire decided to research and create advanced warships, this would be the result. Also, you forgot about Thrawn's Tie Defender fighter ships.

I do believe the laat could fly in space. As it had seals on the bay doors

Could you make a video on what the Empire could have done with their fighters, like the TIE variants, etc.? That would be interesting. Thanks for this video, by the way. Very Entertaining and informative.

This was really well done. Kudos to you