The Force Awakens - Spoilerific Discussion.

[eldargal]

[Alaric]

The New Republic and First Order aren't at war, they're currently in a Cold War. Think of post-WWII Europe. The Western European nations just managed to throw off an oppressive, invasive regime after years of tough war and incredible losses, so they have no interest in extending that war any more. Democracy took back over, and with that the largest opinion was, "please let this war end."

So, much like the steady growth of the Soviets post-WWII, no direct military action was taken against the threat of the First Order in the background. While the boots on the ground and the military commanders were trying to show what a threat they were, the politicians were bowing to the pressure of not sending more sons to die. Were the First Order not comfortably hidden away? What threat could they be? Have armies on standby and continue expanding our power, but direct military action isn't necessary.

Thus, the First Order were able to start gathering resources from mothballed Empire projects. Starkiller Base, the new Star Destroyer schematics, they sat back and bade their time. They used indoctrinated troopers because the Clones are expensive, but kidnapping children is incredibly cheap.

Meanwhile, the New Republic, in some fashion, bows to pressure from the Rebellion. They propose renaming said Rebellion to the Resistance, and beginning arming them with new weapons and ships under the table. Much like the proxy wars fought through factions like the Taliban or Cubans, the Resistance are being armed with the Republic's silent blessing to deal with the First Order, or at least keep it busy, so that the Republic can continue giving its citizens the mirage of a peaceful order.

This mirage is shattered when the First Order attack Hosnian Prime and their fleet. The Republic were out-Mutually Assured Destruction'd. Now they have minimal military power that we know of, but also the First Order are wounded following the loss of the SKB. Still, it's heavily implied that they have some fleet assets that were away from the base, and the destruction of Hosnian Prime might have been the only objective for the SKB, so that the New Republic could be engaged with minimal military resistance. If the SKB is an old Empire project they took over and got operational, that makes sense. It'd be like Soviet Russia getting the nukes off first before America could even retaliate, so all they have to do is walk over ash to take the country and subjugate whatever military remains with ease.

I'm personally disappointed that we never see fleet action in Star Wars, though. Even the battle in Return of the Jedi barely has the capital vessels doing anything, except being a backdrop for small ship action between fighters and bombers. The only time we really see ship-to-ship battles is in the Clone Wars series and the Battle of Coruscant in The Revenge of the Sith, actually.

The Empire has never placed a defensive fleet around its valuable Death Stars, for some unknowable reason. Heck, there's only a half-dozen Ties defending the first one, but that's budget constraints for you. I agree that one would expect a decent picket fleet of capital vessels and an absolute horde of small ships to intercept fighters, especially as the Starkiller Base was taken out by basically the same approach as the first Death Star, and the second Death Star was dealt with in the same way when its shields were brought down, but to be fair, who in the Empire would have expected Ewoks to wipe out a Storm Trooper battalion?

Thanks to you and Erik for all these insights.
Question though, where are you guys getting this info from? Is there a book or two that they released?
also
I was under the impression that the hive world that got blowed up was coruscant, Im guessing its this Hosnian joint from your blurb there, so is Coruscant still alive? I noticed there were 4-5 other beams hitting other places as well, were they known planets?

It seems like if you didn't read whatever it is you have read, you are woefully unprepared for the movie. I was wondering why a stormtrooper was gawking at everything and not goin pew pew. I was wondering why that stormtrooper went hand to hand when he coulda just popped buddy there and moved on. Not a fan of needing to pre research things just to know wtf is goin on. I believe I woulda enjoyed the movies a helluva lot more if I knew that crap goin in.

[CoffeeGrunt]

Thanks to you and Erik for all these insights.
Question though, where are you guys getting this info from? Is there a book or two that they released?
also
I was under the impression that the hive world that got blowed up was coruscant, Im guessing its this Hosnian joint from your blurb there, so is Coruscant still alive? I noticed there were 4-5 other beams hitting other places as well, were they known planets?

It seems like if you didn't read whatever it is you have read, you are woefully unprepared for the movie. I was wondering why a stormtrooper was gawking at everything and not goin pew pew. I was wondering why that stormtrooper went hand to hand when he coulda just popped buddy there and moved on. Not a fan of needing to pre research things just to know wtf is goin on. I believe I woulda enjoyed the movies a helluva lot more if I knew that crap goin in.

It's partially conjecture, partially pieces from the novel and that visual guide. Interesting thing about this movie is how much conjecture, theory and talk it's generating. In that regard, it's got people discussing the new Star Wars lore and throwing down ideas, which IMO is something pretty sweet to see after all this time. There's hints in various scenes, such as Lord Snoke's theme being the same theme played when Palpatine is telling the story of Darth Plagueis the Wise, implying that he might be Plagueis, who was killed by his apprentice in the tale, but also was looking to find a way to cheat death. Perhaps he did, and has been watching, waiting all this time.

In which case, the current First Order's MO makes sense. They're a shadow threat, more like ISIS than the ****s. They appear, wreak havoc, take what they need, then fall back before the New Republic can mount an effective response. Hence the fact they've got a Starkiller Base that's far beyond their means to build, and means little to Snoke when it gets destroyed. Its objective was to cut the heart from the New Republic, and it achieved that.

I'm looking forward to seeing if Plagueis is this Tzeentchian entity that's been manipulating things all this time, and there's no way of knowing where the trilogy may go in terms of, well...everything.

The other planets were Hosnian Prime's moons, btw. They took out the planet and moons, but the event was observed from another habitable planet in the system.

[CoffeeGrunt]

This is actually a pretty interesting summary:
[URL="http://io9.gizmodo.com/all-the-backstory-you-desperately-want-to-know-about-th-1751196966"]http://io9.gizmodo.com/all-the-backstory-you-desperately-want-to-know-about-th-1751196966[/URL]

[Alaric]

Thanks muchly man. I will maintain it didn't feel star warsy enuff to me but I never said it was a bad movie. All this background is really helping the movies case out, but again, I shouldn't HAVE to find all this stuff out after the fact but I understand they only got what, 2.5 hours (?) to tell the story that already felt rushed. Hopefully in the next couple they backtrack and explain some stuff more fully.

Darth Plagueis (Holy crap that's a task to spell) eh...Hopefully he mans up Solos sissy kid....so the girl can whoop em again lol Kinda wish she was Solos daughter but that's just my love for the EU talkin

[Erik Setzer]

Phasma and Hux think indoctrinated intensive trained humans are better than clones, its in the Visual Dictionary an elsewhere and also hinted at in movie when Kylo sort or threatens Hux with switching to clones.

And then there's the whole thing with how the original clone army came pre-programmed with a lot of orders (the one to kill all Jedi was Order 66... that means *at least* 65 other secret orders programmed in). It's possible someone could hijack the clones, or have them secretly programmed to obey one person above others. With basic people trained up to be soldiers, that's less likely.

[Erik Setzer]

I'm personally disappointed that we never see fleet action in Star Wars, though.

I'd love to see a nice fleet battle, but it'll probably be relegated to a side movie or something. My "dream" is that they'd do a live-action series with the same concept as the X-Wing novels, following a crack squadron as it engages the Empire and gets involved in some fleet actions. Doubt they'll do it, but it'd be pretty cool, IMO.

The Empire has never placed a defensive fleet around its valuable Death Stars, for some unknowable reason. Heck, there's only a half-dozen Ties defending the first one, but that's budget constraints for you. I agree that one would expect a decent picket fleet of capital vessels and an absolute horde of small ships to intercept fighters, especially as the Starkiller Base was taken out by basically the same approach as the first Death Star, and the second Death Star was dealt with in the same way when its shields were brought down, but to be fair, who in the Empire would have expected Ewoks to wipe out a Storm Trooper battalion?

The first Death Star assumed nothing could hurt it. Starfighters weren't considered a threat and it had all kinds of anti-capital ship firepower. (The second DS could actually fire its laser once per minute to obliterate capital ships.) Tarkin saw no reason to believe X-Wings and Y-Wings could hurt it, even after he was told they realized there might be a problem. The second DS had a fleet, but the TIEs got caught up trying to stop the Rebels from wrecking their capital ships (especially once the Executor went down), so they didn't have a lot of them to go after the Falcon and Wedge, and some of the ones that did either got destroyed or got distracted by someone like Tycho and pulled off course.

With Starkiller Base, the fleet was out in orbit, but the Resistance X-Wings jumped out of hyperspace practically in atmosphere... a risky move that you can probably pull off better with snubfighters than with capital ships. They sent the TIEs that would be on standby after the X-Wings, but given that they didn't expect an assault, it'd be hard to scramble TIEs from the ground or the air, taking several minutes per squadron. (We see a lot of the grounded craft being wrecked as the planet comes apart because even though they knew it was happening, you can't just launch a ship in seconds.) TIEs in the fleet would have to launch and fly to the planet and get to the area where the X-Wings were, so that's several more minutes for them. Being caught by surprise really limited their options.

And I can't blame them for being surprised. You don't expect the Resistance to really launch an attack against something like the SKB, especially with the fleet they had there, and you certainly don't expect coming out of hyperspace right on top of the planet. Even if they had, it seems a lot of people forget that X-Wings come equipped with weapons designed to wreck capital ships, so they'd work well against buildings.

Oh, but that's another thing! The X-Wings weren't able to hurt it until it got blasted open by a team inside. And they'd probably expect the Stormtroopers patrolling everywhere to prevent an infiltration. The infiltration wasn't entirely successful in wrecking the place; it opened the hole that let the X-Wings get to the bits they needed to blow off. If either piece of that plan failed, the whole thing fails.

So yeah, the SKB had reasonable defenses, given what the Resistance's capabilities were. The Resistance just happened to have better/luckier people than the First Order thought they did.

[CoffeeGrunt]

And then there's the whole thing with how the original clone army came pre-programmed with a lot of orders (the one to kill all Jedi was Order 66... that means *at least* 65 other secret orders programmed in). It's possible someone could hijack the clones, or have them secretly programmed to obey one person above others. With basic people trained up to be soldiers, that's less likely.

There were 149 other, minor Orders programmed in. Mostly in order to hide #66.

[Erik Setzer]

There were 149 other, minor Orders programmed in. Mostly in order to hide #66.

Yeah, but that just goes to show how easy it would be to hide something really bad in there. It's a similar problem to a droid army.

Also, the people you're fighting for tend to be a little creeped out when everyone in the military looks and sounds pretty much the same. (While they might be evil, at least from our perspective, it's easy to imagine the First Order believes they're protecting people from the chaotic New Republic, so "hearts and minds" might still be a consideration.)

[CoffeeGrunt]

Yeah, but that just goes to show how easy it would be to hide something really bad in there. It's a similar problem to a droid army.

Also, the people you're fighting for tend to be a little creeped out when everyone in the military looks and sounds pretty much the same. (While they might be evil, at least from our perspective, it's easy to imagine the First Order believes they're protecting people from the chaotic New Republic, so "hearts and minds" might still be a consideration.)

It also led to commanders needlessly wasting them, because they considered them to be worthless because they're clones. A force of individual humans at least is perceived to have more value.