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Differences that I liked about Thrawn as opposed to other SW Imperials:
1. Avoid superweapons. Use more mundane things in creative an unusual ways.
2. Avoid over the top scenery-chewing badguy behavior. Thrawn doesn't Force choke people. He doesn't seal people in spaceships and send them into stars. He's purely interested in waging a war and the tactics involved there. To me, this is the difference between a "worthy enemy" like Rommel, whose primary input was just his battlefield canniness, and a "louche enemy" like Himmler, who went to all sorts of extremes persecuting Jews and didn't seem that concerned with the actual collapsing state of his nation. (Not that I condone Nazis. The point I'm trying to make is you can have capable generals who might have been good generals if they were on the right side - those you can respect. And then you can have excessive leaders who will never be "on the right side" because any side they're on will by association become the "wrong side" because of their excesses.)
As to Thrawn's actual tactical prowess, these were the things I really appreciated:
1. Thrawn has a cloaking device. Most planets have orbital shields that are able to withstand ship bombardments. Thrawn smuggles a few cloaked ships at strategic points past the orbital shield. He positions them carefully inside the orbital shield.
Later, he opens fire with a big ship in orbit. The laser blast travels towards the shield and hits it, then dissipates. However, the invisible ship INSIDE the shield opens fire at just about the same time. Because the cloaked ship is inside, its laser blast hits home along the same trajectory. To an outside observer, it seems that the big ship fired a pulse that bashed through the shield and hit the planet's surface. Scary stuff! After several salvoes of this, the planet's inhabitants believe Thrawn has a superweapon that can shoot past planetary shields. They surrender.
2. Thrawn has a cloaking device. His ships snare an unspecified number of asteroids. They plant cloaking devices on the asteroids, so the asteroids are invisible. His fleet travels to the Republic capital planet and blockades it. They release the asteroids into orbit using tractor beam pulses. Because the asteroids are invisible, Republic craft in the area are destroyed unpredictably through asteroid collisions. The entire planet goes into a state of isolated quarantine, with no ships going in or out. They gradually sweep the orbits looking for asteroids. They find a few dozen, but are still looking for a few hundred, since Thrawn's tractor beam pulses numbered that many.
Turns out there only ever were a few dozen. The rest of the tractor beam pulses were just decoys, causing them to waste time looking for asteroids that weren't there.
3. Thrawn has a cloaking device. (Did I mention this?) He also has a few mining vehicles. He equips an old shipping container with TIE Fighters and makes them cloaked to bypass sensors. The shipping container floats into a Republic shipyard and then detonates, freeing the TIE Fighters, who then uncloak and engage the Rebel fighter defense. Meanwhile, Thrawn's main fleet arrives and sends mining vehicles out to the enemy capital ships.
The mining vehicles mine through the command centers of the capital ships and Thrawn's stormtroopers clamber through and disable the Rebel crews. The plan is for them to capture the enemy capital ships and take them away.
(And one more spoiler, this time from the amazing PC game TIE Fighter from 1995.)
4. Thrawn has a cloaking device, but it doesn't work too well. It has problems when the user enters hyperspace. Thrawn is tasked with capturing rogue Admiral Zaarin. Zaarin humiliates Thrawn by capturing his cloaking technology prototype. Thrawn maneuvers Zaarin into a certain defeat scenario where the only option is to escape in hyperspace. Zaarin does so while cloaked, which causes a catastrophic reaction. The craft splits apart in hyperspace, killing all inside.
1. Avoid superweapons. Use more mundane things in creative an unusual ways.
2. Avoid over the top scenery-chewing badguy behavior. Thrawn doesn't Force choke people. He doesn't seal people in spaceships and send them into stars. He's purely interested in waging a war and the tactics involved there. To me, this is the difference between a "worthy enemy" like Rommel, whose primary input was just his battlefield canniness, and a "louche enemy" like Himmler, who went to all sorts of extremes persecuting Jews and didn't seem that concerned with the actual collapsing state of his nation. (Not that I condone Nazis. The point I'm trying to make is you can have capable generals who might have been good generals if they were on the right side - those you can respect. And then you can have excessive leaders who will never be "on the right side" because any side they're on will by association become the "wrong side" because of their excesses.)
As to Thrawn's actual tactical prowess, these were the things I really appreciated:
1. Thrawn has a cloaking device. Most planets have orbital shields that are able to withstand ship bombardments. Thrawn smuggles a few cloaked ships at strategic points past the orbital shield. He positions them carefully inside the orbital shield.
Later, he opens fire with a big ship in orbit. The laser blast travels towards the shield and hits it, then dissipates. However, the invisible ship INSIDE the shield opens fire at just about the same time. Because the cloaked ship is inside, its laser blast hits home along the same trajectory. To an outside observer, it seems that the big ship fired a pulse that bashed through the shield and hit the planet's surface. Scary stuff! After several salvoes of this, the planet's inhabitants believe Thrawn has a superweapon that can shoot past planetary shields. They surrender.
2. Thrawn has a cloaking device. His ships snare an unspecified number of asteroids. They plant cloaking devices on the asteroids, so the asteroids are invisible. His fleet travels to the Republic capital planet and blockades it. They release the asteroids into orbit using tractor beam pulses. Because the asteroids are invisible, Republic craft in the area are destroyed unpredictably through asteroid collisions. The entire planet goes into a state of isolated quarantine, with no ships going in or out. They gradually sweep the orbits looking for asteroids. They find a few dozen, but are still looking for a few hundred, since Thrawn's tractor beam pulses numbered that many.
Turns out there only ever were a few dozen. The rest of the tractor beam pulses were just decoys, causing them to waste time looking for asteroids that weren't there.
3. Thrawn has a cloaking device. (Did I mention this?) He also has a few mining vehicles. He equips an old shipping container with TIE Fighters and makes them cloaked to bypass sensors. The shipping container floats into a Republic shipyard and then detonates, freeing the TIE Fighters, who then uncloak and engage the Rebel fighter defense. Meanwhile, Thrawn's main fleet arrives and sends mining vehicles out to the enemy capital ships.
The mining vehicles mine through the command centers of the capital ships and Thrawn's stormtroopers clamber through and disable the Rebel crews. The plan is for them to capture the enemy capital ships and take them away.
(And one more spoiler, this time from the amazing PC game TIE Fighter from 1995.)
4. Thrawn has a cloaking device, but it doesn't work too well. It has problems when the user enters hyperspace. Thrawn is tasked with capturing rogue Admiral Zaarin. Zaarin humiliates Thrawn by capturing his cloaking technology prototype. Thrawn maneuvers Zaarin into a certain defeat scenario where the only option is to escape in hyperspace. Zaarin does so while cloaked, which causes a catastrophic reaction. The craft splits apart in hyperspace, killing all inside.
] because the author said he was, he doesn't come up with anything that a 5th grader couldn't have thought of. All the times Zahn trys to show his genius you end up having to roll your eyes at how pathetically simple/predictabe/obvious his ideas are (which just shows how retarded the other authors are that they can't come up with anything better).
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