Thrawn had a pretty small fleet in legends, but it's for a good reason. 🔸 More From Corey 🔸 Support the Content: / coreyloses Twitter: / coreyloses Discord Server: / discord #starwars #lore
I had always just assumed that Thrawn kept the exact number of ships he needed to achieve maximal effect and sent the rest back to hold down the fort because he recognized that other commanders relied on numbers to be effective. I've always quite appreciated how the trilogy demonstrated the potential power and versatility of an ISD by only having one or two of them in most engagements yet still handling the task at hand. Of course, Zahn's intention was probably to show exactly this in the hands of a good commander, but it's always been a high point of my Star Wars experience.
Also, a smaller fleet moves faster, needs less supply, and lets you pick the battles. In many ways, he uses the same tactic as the rebels, as the New Republic has to defend everywhere he can attack anywhere
My impression always was that Thrawn operated quite deep within NR territory considering he attacks worlds like Bilbringi that are on the other side of the galaxy compared to his territory. The actual "frontlines" at the border probably took up most imperial and NR ressources while Thrawn was jumping around with his ISDs
OH I'd had the idea that the Reaper was actually En-route to Bilbringi but he'd never actually TOLD Thrawn or Pellaeon that. (Or maybe Thrawn had been told and that's why he was insistent he could recover if he held out a little longer. He just didn't tell Pellaeon because he liked wowing him.)
One minor correction, there is some hint of Imperial division and disunity even within the Thrawn Trilogy novels with Fey'lya's dismissal of Thrawn as a Grand Admiral when he mentions it is most likely a self-promoted Moff or someone who just assumed the title to draw support, rather than a genuine article. There's also the power grab C'baoth attempts in The Last Command with Pellaeon mentioning that there's a need to remind the rank and file(he particularly mentions the young recruits) that Thrawn, not C'baoth is in charge. It's minimal, granted but it is there.
Sounds like hold overs from the imperial days, which is the reason why the empire fell in the first place. The rebels just filled the role of the barbarians at the gates of Rome; the real rot is internal.
@@Jeff55369 same with the post Qing Warlord Era in China then the Chinese Civil War, both of which have many similarities to how the Imperial Civil War and Galactic Civil War happened in SW
I always thought the later worldbuilding retroactively 'fixing' issues with the older EU works was a masterclass. This 'arc-welding' makes it sound very much like the Chinese warlord period which this is all based on, with small but motivated groups able to out-maenouvre the jealous, scared status-quo loving warlords.
Considering some Warlords backed Thrawn I always was under the impression of he had relied on Vasslization, especially given the Cuitric Hegemony and Corellian Sector Lent some support to him.
It's not so much he relied on vassalization so much as his hobby in studying various species' and civilizations' art gave him an edge in understanding how certain groups and cultures functioned, where they were strong and where they were weak. This subtext highlights how Thrawn's philosophy in promoting out-of-box thinking and intelligent command and warfare with an emphasis on fleet flexibility, tactical and strategic maneuverability and opponent analysis is far superior to the fear-based Tarkin Doctrine of making massive and costly superweapons/military assets to scare the populace into not even entertaining the possibility of rebellion. Hell I myself managed to defeat several fleets of greater scale and prowess in the 'Thrawn's Revenge' mod by using a small fleet of only a couple of heavy frigates and a few corvettes by using the small ships' superior speed and maneuverability to draw the fleet apart and jump on top of the weaker isolated pockets before jumping out after my targets are eliminated and use this strategy to maintain constant hit-and-run raids to whittle them down until I can crush their final remnants.
Was the Imperial Fleet was massive on paper, but it is absolutely tiny in the controlling of a entire Galaxy, as a twenty five thousand star destroyers and assistance crafts like cruisers and frigates were too few.
I know right. Galaxies are enormous. (Understatement of the millennia.) 25,000 star destroyers may seem like a lot but to a galaxy spanning a 100,000+ diameter, is that really significant? But to another franchise (I'll use WH40K for an example), that could be lost and not be such a big deal. And if you have a setting where Dyson Swarms are a thing, that would be considered a tiny colonization fleet. One of thousands that depart every week. And wouldn't even be worth any thought of time to anyone of significant influence.
@@papapalps2415 Saying having 25k ISDs is too few is also weird, it's like saying the US does not have enough carriers to have at least one in every state during peacetime, which is somehow an issue. The rebellion was very small and sporadic until the first Death Star, and even between that and the second one most worlds would at worst experience ground rebel cells. SW worlds do not tend to be very populated beside the core worlds (the setting is important, not every sci-fi/sci-fantasy has 450 quadrillions humans on every moon) and there is nothing even approaching the idea of near-peer to the Empire in the galaxy. ISDs suck because they're the wrong tool for the job, there's no point having so many battleships when you're the only one with those. An oppressive state needs first and foremost weapons geared for quelling internal dissent, driving tanks down a town square is the penultimate move, not the pre-emptive one. As you said, the Empire can pump out anything it wants (within budget, there's a galaxy to run after all), which should have been enough patrol and survey ships to know when some dude driving his space truck in the outer rim is looking at an imperial asset the wrong way for more that five seconds, and let the ground team kindly welcome and invite him to a night at the hotel the moment he lands somewhere.
Thrawn probably also found it poetic to use rebel tactics against the New Republic small numbers hit and run on worlds where they were needed just like the Rebel alliance did to the Empire
In a galaxy that was polarized by the Clone Wars, it would have been hard to explain how the New Republic would have found more resources that the Empire to police and secure all systems. Since the _structural_ problem remained, the vulnerability to the same strategy did, too. Thrawn appears to have grown up, elsewhere when he did not share the Core-centric hubris of other academy graduates as he alone realized and exploited the above... Even the 'Tarkin Doctrine' had recognized the problem and tried to make the Imperial Navy, deliberately to _look_ more omnipresent than it possibly could be - apparently with most Imperial officer cadets believing in the propaganda, themselves and acting accordingly, assuming invincibility...
Wait what map added Ruling Council Territory? Was that one of the online addendums of the Atlas? I had noticed the Post-Isard and Post-Dark Empire(IE Crimson Empire) Council imperial territories never got maps in the paper one.
The maps covering the Thrawn Campaign had his entire confederation (including the one used in the video), and extrapolating from the known PA territory and other minor groups, along with what was taken in the campaigns against Zsinj, plus the fact that Orinda is known to be the capital, lets you at least approximate territory controleld by them at that point.
I always assumed that Thrawn used the bulk of the Empire's fleet to occupy and secure conquered lands, so his offensive fleet, backed up with Battle Meditation, needed only a small but elite force to push the New Republic back.
I wish some EU authors read LOGH novels before writing their own novels, Yoshiki Tanaka who's author of siad novels did managed to write battles with at peak hundred of thousands ship in battle and it's not that hard you can just scale up think Thrown is grand admiral and has admirals under him and there is nothing stoping any of them to have at least dozens of ships under everyone command amassing to few hounded ships in total.
5:18 Minor point of correction: Thrawn and Pellaeon were planning to leave Ackbar alive at Bilbringi so his return would put him under suspicion and otherwise further the New Republic's political dissent.
Thrawns small scale fleet was, at first, mostly to do with manpower, I believe. Also that He didn't need to rely on overwhelming numbers to achieve his tactical goals. His encounter with the at the start of HttE showed that.
It is a bit odd that Thrawn does offhandedly mention a Bespin Garrison, but the Atlas has Bespin on the far side of the deep core from him, so it would have to be some sort of undercover garrison. Then again Sluis is ALSO over on that side of the galaxy, and he had major offensives in that area,.I guess he had routes through the Deep Core, but that was Palpatine's stomping grounds and he wouldn't want Thrawn getting too much of a whiff of what he was building up.
The out of universe explanation is what the maps are faced with an impossible task of making sense of so many offhanded references and writing decisions that they will never make true sense. But that’s boring and I much prefer explanations about Thrawn using the deep core or something.
The New Republic at this time probably still didn't have the ressources to have consistent Interdictor Patrols at their borders so assuming Thrawn has access to some routes through the deep core it's not a problem for him to hold a few worlds that are far away from his actual territory.
@@starshipreviews It's like the Atlas making two planets that are SUPPOSED to be relatively close in the X-Wing Comics (The World Leia met Pestage on near Ciutric, and Plour's homeworld) very far apart across the contested core.
Glad you enjoy them. Luckily once I have the workflow set up to do a specific type of thing (the movement, territory changes like here, etc) it's relatively easy to repeat the effect, though it's definitely a lot more time intensive than slapping in a picture.
Fine account of characters and plausible motivations that makes for 'realism' in fictional world building. In the real world there is a reason for dispatching select task forces - or commandos - instead of an all out offensive - if not solely to keep a low profile that can be obscured or be underestimated in their operational potential and accumulating, _systemic_ effects - when e.g. entire fleets can't react to a nearby attack due to the destruction of fuel supplies or it's paranoid dispersion to scatered boatloads. Such approach can make for captivating storytelling with a cast of readily comprehensible - memorable - characters, interacting with another in relatable drama, thereby maturing in their arcs to a satisfying resolution (here, tragic failure that shows how the personal regiment of the Glactic Empire depended on Godsent cadres).
Good points, would add that many ships were also probably lost to defection and destruction in prior actions. As an addition I would argue that the New Republic fleet in the period is experiencing a similar lack of ships as it is still trying to build up its numerically inferior forces, and also defend a majority of the galaxy from the empire. Trying to be strong everywhere means they have a similar lack of ships to Thrawn.
I really love that the fact that the Thrawn's Trilogy is turned into an RTS Game from what were originally books, and we are getting essentially Lore Updates from Corey and his team that develop Thrawn's Revenge. Like how Warcraft is an RTS Series and they release books, but only in reverse lmao XD Like 90% of my Star Wars Lore, I've only known the Thrawn Trilogy through the games only. And to see and hear this awesome lore is just really nice :D
Depends on what you're looking for. The Expanded Universe / Legends timeline is divided into multiple eras of stories you can choose from, ranging from thousands of years before the original 6 movies and centuries after them. If, for example, you're mainly or solely interested in the saga after Return Of The Jedi, most veteran fans will recommend either the first 7 books in the X-Wing series of novels or the Thrawn Trilogy as jumping-on points. The former because it's among the few stories centered squarely on pilots rather than Jedi, and because it chronicles the early years of the New Republic as it slowly liberates the galaxy from Imperial rule. It also takes place chronologically before the Thrawn Trilogy despite being published after it. And the latter because it's one of the earliest EU stories set after RoTJ in publication order, serves as an essential continuation of the main OT characters' story, and introduces a lot of lore that shapes the rest of the EU both in-universe and out-of-universe. But if you're interested in the past, most will recommend starting with either the Tales Of The Jedi comics, the Darth Bane Trilogy, or the Darth Plagueis novel.
I loved the Thrawn Trilogy back in the day and was sad when they made it non-canon. I always assumed that we were only seeing a small part of the conflict. I did not read all the source books, so I always assumed that there was not really a 'static' frontline between the Empire and NR - just system they 'control/influence'. Also lines are hard to make in 3D space. I think there is also an issue with scale - the galaxy is a big place. I remeber hearing that the Empire had 10,000 Start Destroyers back in the day, that didnt make sense to me as a kid. But then saw that the Empire was supposed to control a Million worlds. So, if each SD visited a planet for a week, and then moved on - it would still take them just shy of 2 years before they visited all the worlds (1M / 10K = 100 (weeks) = 2 years). It does make more sense that 90% of Empire and NR ships are 'on patrol/showing the flag' in systems they alreay control - so the battles are only showing a small portion of the available ships. Also, writers sometimes have an issues with numbers/scale. But enjoyed the video.
Basically, Thrawn was granted his old command. He was tasked with the destruction of the New Republic. Both Moffs and Warlords played the political game, show us success, and gain our support. What's interesting is the gamble Thrawn takes working with a mad jedi.
Out of universe, the world-building after Zahn was often really poor. Having read Zahn, and seen the movies, and played the X Wing games (all with similarly sized fleets) why would subsequent authors think it was sensible to talk about "10,000 star destroyers"? Even a guy with a fleet of 200 Victory class Star Destroyers (painted red) is massively over-powered really. As for the fracturing of the Empire into warlords after End or, that's actually not so bad, but it's inconsistent as a prelude to the Thrawn stories that preceded those later books. Psychologically, once self interested officers form their own empires, then "the" Empire is dead-and-buried.
@@papapalps2415 Whether or not I was dropped on the skull, what I'm saying is I. completely in line with the films, where you never see even a hundred star destroyers Ii. Completely in line with desired dramatic effect. Have you played TFTC, as opposed to vanilla Tie Fighter? You become irrelevant. And that's not tens of thousands of Star Destroyers, it's just a series of Zahn-style skirmishes. If you have 25k Star Destroyers, each of those are then of no importance.
The "galaxy" before the prequels really, was made up of like 100-200 planets at most. A few ships per planet total made sense. Then you get the senate building, and realize each of those specks represents not a planet, not a system, but a whole secror of star systems, and suddenly you jumled from a fairytale dream version of a galaxy to a real one. Of course scales dont add up. You can reconcile it however you like.
40k universe is same size, and logh is smaller but both have 100k ships in space battles. Star wars just fails to grasp the size of a galactic conflict
Ships are just stupid expensive. A nebulon B is described as taking up the entire military budget of an avrage industrialized planet. SW still has millions of ships in total, but many of them are frigates or smaller. Full on star destroyers there are only a few bundred thousand total in the galaxy.
On paper, the inclusion of the Reaper at Bilbringi would have surely won the battle in favor of the Empire... perhaps also ensured the deaths of Ackbar and Rogue Squadron. But there are larger problems overall. For one, I think Thrawn would still have ended up assassinated, as the issue with the Noghri remained. And it was the loss of Thrawn that lost the battle, not so much the Imperial resources remaining at Bilbringi. Pellaeon sounded a tactical retreat, and things were getting chaotic, but there remained a solid chance that they could have held their ground. It wouldn't have been pretty, the shipyards would've been destroyed, and a lot more Imperial assets lost (and they'd probably have to leave anyway), but the victory remained possible. Including Reaper in their assets would've probably been the deathknell of that NR fleet, but without Thrawn, what are they going to do next? Things would probably have still resulted in the Fourth Battle of Coruscant (9ABY) and the expulsion of the NR. The Rogues would be missed, but honestly, most of their work for the NR had already been done and their one remaining battle of note was the Battle of Mon Calamari, which may have resulted in a massive NR defeat even with Luke's help sabotaging the World Devastators. But the Empire probably would still be defeated. As for the loss of Ackbar.... again, a sore loss, but most of his biggest and most notable battles have already been won by 9ABY, so I don't think it'd have been a huge loss without him? Maybe take the NR a couple more years to consolidate, but it's not like there aren't capable officers who can pick up the slack, like General Bel Iblis, Sien Sovv, or Admiral Krey'fey. As for the topic itself, Thrawn probably knows exactly what assets he needs to make his campaign work, and having additional vessels at certain points would've been extraneous on his limited resources. It wasn't until after taking Wayland and Ukio and the Katana Fleet that he could start doing bigger actions.
I'm fine with the relative scaling between different groups and with the individual impact of characters, just please add two or three zeroes to _everything_ to put it on a genuinely interstellar scale? Sincerely, a sci-fi nerd who's gone way too deep into the sci-
One thing I wonder is if it is possible to hold a consistent frontline at the borders of certain faction ? Because we often get the impression that any ship can jump to any planet.
Hyperspace lanes vary a lot, and some are able to cut across the galaxy without bumping into other systems. General Grievous was able to attack Coruscant with Palpatine's supplied hyperspace lanes through the Deep Core.
I still prefer the minimalist approach since all the Original movies and most of all that followed, The Clone Wars, and Dusney + show all seem to support that smaller scale rather than the much bigger galaxy the novels and source books portray. You can rationalize it as the galaxy being much smaller and connected due to the way hyperspace lanes work but Star Wars just doesn't work for me when it tries to have the ridiculous 40k scale that a truly galactic sized "universe" would have.
Actually 40k has the same universe size, same amount of planets. Even logh universe which is smaller has 100k destroyer size ships in a single battle on one side. Star wars just fails at size
I tend to see the imperial numbers as much smaller than we normaly think. Resourcebooks stats the Star Destroyer fleets to be in the ten ouf thousends but I tend to see them in the houndreds at most. This is much more in line with the capital ship numbers here on Earth during the both world wars whom we know GL took heavily inspiriation from. So even if there where many more escort ships spread around the world/galaxy there where only a limited number of main battle ships for either the emperor not Thrawn and thats why we "only" see a few dozen ships at the battle of Endor when there should be houndreds if not thousends if the reference books are correct. J.
Comparing fleets on Earth to fleets that are needed to control an entire galaxy seems wrong in my opinion. Tens of thousands of star destroyers are actually quite small when we're talking about the Galactic Empire. The reason we see so little star destroyers in battles like Endor are because the Imperial Navy is distributed among the hundreds of star systems, meaning only few are stationed at a sector at any given time.
Thrawn has yet to be misrepresented or below most if not everyone's standard. His portraile in the Rebels show is nearly identical to how he is in the books.
it's a bit like the Battle of Endor, where the Film says that TWO ENTIRE FLEETS that consisted COMBINED ... around? less? 100 Larger Ships? Ofc. they hadn't more since it would take another 22 Years to get a believable large Fleet on the Screen but the Two Fleets also get somewhat reconned that they are not the full forces of both sides and where the Rest of the Ships might be And if you go from that route that the Ships in the Movie ARE the full Forces of the Galaxy, then then 200 Ships of the Katana Fleet und Thrawns initial Flotilla sound also much more impressive, the downside of beeing the First in a Made up Universe
I suggest giving a reread to EGtW. They were one of the groups that did in fact join up with Thrawn, but forces available were limited for all the reasons I outlined in the video.
A fleet is still a fleet, just has to be more than one ship. We get it though, you aren't satisfied with the mandalorian tvshow and felt that this was the appropriate place to make jokes. Sadly, no one cared.
@@Shiresquad2 tiny boats isn't a fleet. It's not even a flotilla. A fleet, in military terms, has to consist of a large amount of capital ship squadrons
Yes. Disney has put Thrawn into peoples minds. Now they'll grow tired of his few Disney Wars appearances, and find the truth; The sequel trilogy we were supposed to have.
