So, it’s 2BBY in the new canon timeline and Mon Mothma has just formally declared
the Rebel Alliance, what if the first thing they wanted to do was to capture an Imperial
Star Destroyer.
How would they go about it?
First I feel I should point out the obvious: this is a terrible idea, the capture of an
Imperial Class Star Destroyer would be an immensely costly endeavour, that would only
ever result in the rebellion capturing a ship that is completely incompatible with their
style of warfare.
If the rebellion had an ISD, it would be an enormous target, dozens more ISD’s would
be sent to take it down, and even just having the huge ship present would stop the rebels
from being able to use the fast attack tactics they are best at, not to mention the huge
number of rebels that would have to be aboard the ship to keep it running, people the alliance
cannot afford to lose in the same way the Empire could.
With all that aside, let’s put a plan together.
First, we’ll need to assemble a fleet for the job using what the rebellion had at the
time, and the biggest and most powerful warship they had available was Home One, but the alliance
never risked deploying that even when Atollon came under siege, so let’s assume they’d
keep that at Yavin.
But the thing the Alliance do best is starfighters, better than anyone else, and in this instance,
we want to disable a ship to board it, not destroy it, so the precision afforded by fighter
attacks is ideal.
With this in mind, let’s deploy Sato and the Phoenix Home, the second largest ship
the rebels have right now, and a dedicated carrier.
If we use legends sources because in this case we have no alternative, we come to 48
strike craft on the Quasar Fire, and at this point in the canon timeline they would probably
be A-Wings and Y-Wings.
Now at this time the Empire totally dominates the galaxy, so It would be impossible to catch
an ISD on its own, they would always be travelling with at least a light cruiser or corvette
to provide a point-defence screen, or be close enough to a military installation to call
for reinforcements.
Let’s be generous and say alliance intelligence has located an ISD, protected by a Raider
Class Corvette and an Arquitens Class Light Cruiser, near a backwater imperial facility
way out on the rim, say in the Polis Massa system.
Now the rebels are going to need some smaller warships to protect their carrier and engage
the Star Destroyer’s escort, but they’re gonna want to keep their bases back in rebel
space defended and they don’t want this force to be too large and difficult to manage,
so let’s give them two Nebulon-B frigates and two CR90 Corvettes, plus a couple of GR75’s
for the necessary boarding force.
Now if you remember, the rebels captured a Gozanti Class Cruiser back in the Battle of
Mustafar, it’s time to put that to use.
We’ll smash the ship around a bit to make it look like it’s been in a battle, then
leave a distress beacon aboard and dump it in the Star Destroyer’s patrol path, plus
we rig up some explosives for remote detonation and hide them inside the cruiser.
It’s worth pointing out that the Rebels episode ‘Warhead’ depicts a single proton
warhead exploding aboard a Star Destroyer, and it completely cripples the ship, we don’t
want to do that here so the best option would be to remove the Gozanti’s reactor, and
pack it with only moderate strength explosives.
So, the Star Destroyer and its escorts show up to investigate, and begin to tractor the
Gozanti into the Star Destroyer’s ventral bay, as soon as the ship is secured in their
bay, we jump in our fleet at some distance on the Imperial’s flank and send the signal
to detonate the charges.
This hopefully wouldn’t do an enormous amount of damage to the whole ship, but it would
certainly knock out their capacity to sortie fighter squadrons, which gives us a huge advantage.
At this point we can assume the Imperials have called for help, so speed is of the essence.
An ISD Has very few aft and ventral weapon positions, so we’ll have our ships approach
at about 500 meters down the z-axis so it’s dorsal ion cannons and turbolasers can’t
get a shot.
The escorts are still a problem though, we can’t launch Y-Wings until that Raider Corvette
is eliminated otherwise they’ll be torn to ribbons, so we’ll send both Nebulon B’s
to try and take that down as quickly as possible while the CR90’s run interference, they
can’t realistically attack the Arquitens or the ISD, but they can draw their fire for
a short time.
By now the ISD will be trying to come about, and we can’t use Ion Torpedoes or destroy
its engines because we need to be able to escape with it once it’s captured.
Again, the best option here is to stay low, keep firing up at the Raider and re-orienting
our fleet to try and stay behind the ISD.
As soon as the Raider is destroyed, we launch all our Y-Wings and their fighter escorts
and start moving them in along with the GR75’s.
When they arrive they are gonna target this, a large waste disposal door that we see used
in Empire Strikes Back, this seems like the best entry point for an assault team, because
as we see in Lost Stars, the three points you need to seize to take control of an ISD
are the bridge, auxiliary bridge and engine room, all of which are in relative proximity
to this entry point.
It’s quite possible that the alliance may now lose some warships and a lot of fighters
combating the light cruiser while under the destroyer’s guns, but once the Y-Wings are
close enough they’ll be able to blast the doors through with torpedoes.
With that done, we’re gonna pilot the GR75’s right over the door and just dump commandoes
in space suits out of the bays and into space, so that they can navigate themselves into
the ship.
We can fit 180 troops into two GR75’s, and for this we should use pathfinder commandoes
for their extreme skill, and as many imperial defectors as we can, since they’ll have
inside knowledge of the Star Destroyer layout, if he’s available, Captain Rex would be
a good candidate to lead this attack, he’s an extremely talented veteran with extensive
experience in boarding actions and small unit tactics.
At this point, the Rebel fleet should just flee at sublight as fast as possible.
We can’t disable the ISD or destroy it, so we’re just gonna have to out-range it
and lead it by the nose while the boarding action goes on, taking advantage of the speed
of the smaller alliance warships.
To be honest, I don’t fancy the chances of the two GR75’s at this stage, and there
will probably be further losses beyond them.
The Nebulon-B’s and Y-Wings should have taken down the Light Cruiser by now though,
so once out of range they’ll be in relative safety.
Now the boarding team will have to split up to hit all the critical locations at once,
but the best troops and the commander should be sent immediately to main engineering so
that they can disable the ship’s self-destruct.
Once the bridge, auxiliary bridge and engine room are all secure, the three teams should
seal themselves inside their respective rooms, while the team on the bridge begins systematically
venting every other compartment on the ship into space and disabling their life support.
Standard Stormtrooper armor does not carry an air supply, but it’s possible that some
imperials would survive by finding suits or other sources of oxygen, but at this point
there are most likely a dozen sealed blast doors between them and the rebels, so they’ll
just be left to be dealt with later once the ship is back in rebel space.
After moving in a holding pattern for a while and staying out of range, the Fleet should
eventually receive word that the boarding parties have secured the Star Destroyer.
Thankfully the alliance has managed to keep the destroyer in good condition so it’s
only a matter of forming up and escaping into hyperspace.
I’ll be honest, there’s no way the rebels wouldn’t suffer casualties in this plan
or really any plan with this objective, I’d say the GR75s are almost certainly doomed
after deploying their troops, and there would probably be some warships and a lot of fighters
lost as well.
The boarding action is also extremely risky, and if even one of the teams were eliminated,
the imperials might be able to either activate the self-destruct or vent the rebels into
space.
But overall, I feel like this plan represents the best chance the rebels would have to pull
this off at this point in history.
If you feel like you could improve upon this plan or develop an entirely different strategy,
please lay it out in the comments below, I’d love to read it, and if you’ve got any suggestions
for other sci-fi scenarios you’d like to see me develop tactics for, please go ahead
and comment those as well.
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Spacedock Patreon, it really helps to develop more content like this video, and you’ll
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