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I dont understand Empire...


KelKrios

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I really don't get the whole concept of the Empide and how it grew to the behemoth it is in swtor. Other than plot armor, it makes no sense. You have an absentee emperor, Darths that kill each other on hourly basis for personal gain and soldiers used willy nilly for cannon fodder. Its like if Nazi Germany was killing off all of its greatest soldiers and generals and still somehow able to expand to cover half the globe.

 

I tried playing sith warrior and inquisitor and each time the story goes like "wow you are really strong, thanks for helping the empire, now I must kill you." One of my tools killed like 5 darths and nothing bad happened. "Yes, you can absolutely rule this country! Please kill some more darths."

 

BAH!

 

And why is every sith I meet is a psycho mass murderer?! Lana is a nice change of pace but everyone else....

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I really don't get the whole concept of the Empide and how it grew to the behemoth it is in swtor. Other than plot armor, it makes no sense. You have an absentee emperor, Darths that kill each other on hourly basis for personal gain and soldiers used willy nilly for cannon fodder. Its like if Nazi Germany was killing off all of its greatest soldiers and generals and still somehow able to expand to cover half the globe.

Your comment about the Third Reich is closer to reality than you appear to think. They *did* often kill off or at least seriously hobble their top people, and it did eventually cost them.

And why is every sith I meet is a psycho mass murderer?! Lana is a nice change of pace but everyone else....

Some are, some aren't. Consider these, for example:

* Darth Marr. He's a bad man for sure, but he takes a pragmatic approach to his badness.

* Darth Gravus. To be sure, much of his calm is due to fatigue and such, but he does not approach the Empire's goals as a goggly-eyed maniac.

* Darth Lachris. She's more enthusiastic about killing people than Darth Marr or Lana, but she does it to advance the Empire, not for the thrill of it.

* Acina, both as Darth(1) and Empress. If you get in her way, she'll rub you out just like the most goggly-eyed Sith would, but if you're just standing nearby, no, and she certainly won't do in allies just for the lulz.

 

I'd also point out that while Lana doesn't *seek out* opportunities to kill people, she has no compunction about doing it when necessary, and she has a more permissive definition of "when necessary" than most of us would have in the Real World. (Think: it's clear that she hesitates about killing Tanek out of concern for the player character, not out of any personal reluctance.)

 

(1) During the Seeker Droid missions.

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You're missing an important piece to your puzzle. The infighting among the Dark Council is a recent event. For most of the Empire's history (at least Tenebrae's Empire) the Emperor was directly involved and kept the Dark Council in check. If you read Drew Karpyshyn's novel Revan you see that to be the case. The long periods of absence are fairly recent events in terms of the Empire's total history, and it shows in several ways that the Empire is suffering due to that infighting and the power plays.
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Right. Towards the end, the nazzis were killing off talent for fear of treason and more. This lead to a rather swift decline in military performance, morale and so on.

 

Thats my point, how long can a government structure last with these kinds of shenanigans. I guess I find it frustrating while doing the story content along with side quests and all,every five steps intake there's a yellow eyed pasty maniac with plans for world domination, some horrible plague or just plain ole genocide. First thing gravus says to me: I want to complete Taris destruction. WHY? Scorched earth strategy? Again, why? Wouldn't a planet be of use to you with resources and able-bodied creatures to mine them? Why make rackghoul plague worse then kill everything?! Belsavis and hot are the only two planets with sensible imperials. Even those are few and far between.

 

Obviously I'm not destined to play empire. But after completing bounty hunter, sith warrior and sith inquisitor story lines i can say that the success of the empire is a huge mystery to me. It should not exist at all

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Right. Towards the end, the nazzis were killing off talent for fear of treason and more. This lead to a rather swift decline in military performance, morale and so on.

You should reread your history on the period between the wars. The Nazi's were killing off their own throughout the period which they were active. Most famously the night of the long knives, which took place several years before the outbreak of the war.

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The game very much shows the decline of the Empire as a result. Especially in the IA and LS SI stories.

 

Many people saw the folly and inevitable destruction. The game takes place in that transition period though, we don't see much of what came before in game (novels cover that)

 

People like Marr are the ones who try and reign things in and get it back on track (major plot element in FA and SOR)

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The Sith (as opposed to the Imperial Army, which just tried to make the best of their bat***** crazy Force users) were, up to and including the sacking of Coruscant, a group of self-serving power-hungry individuals bound together by the threat of an eenmy that was powerful enough to defeat and completely destroy them - The Republic with their Jedi protectors..

After the sacking of Coruscant, the Jedi were severely weakened and the Sith saw a chance of victory before eventually signing the Treaty of Coruscant.

Once the Sith realised that the Republic was no longer the huge threat to them that it had been, they started to see other Sith as their primary enemies, and many Sith started to manoeuvre among themselves, jockeying for power within the Sith order.

Effectively, as the threat of external force that was forcing them to co-operate decreased, the individual Sith reverted to their underlying natures, plotting against rivals within the Sith order, thus weakening the Empire and removing their ability to finish off the Republic and ultimately leading to their situation at the end of the class stories on Corellia.

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WHY? Scorched earth strategy? Again, why? Wouldn't a planet be of use to you with resources and able-bodied creatures to mine them? Why make rackghoul plague worse then kill everything?! Belsavis and hot are the only two planets with sensible imperials. Even those are few and far between.

 

I won't deny that Gravus is insane, but with the specific case of Taris there really isn't much worthwhile investment. The Republic has learned this lesson the hard way -- the amount of resources and manpower necessary to rebuild Taris, or even make it habitable, is not worth any potential resource gain.

 

Taris doesn't even seem to have valuable resources (sans scrap metal). The Republic's investment in the planet is purely symbolic and moral.

 

The reason the Empire even cares about removing Taris from the Republic is because Taris is in imperial territory, not because of any resource value. So why not go to whatever terrible length you can to reject the territory from the Republic?

Edited by jedimasterjac
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I really don't get the whole concept of the Empire and how it grew to the behemoth it is in SWTOR. ...

 

...

... It's like if Nazi Germany was killing off all of its greatest soldiers and generals and still somehow able to expand to cover half the globe. :csw_bluesaber::rolleyes::csw_redsaber:

 

......

 

 

BAH!

 

And why is every Sith I meet is a psycho mass murderer?! Lana is a nice change of pace but everyone else....

 

Well, SW:TOR is essentially an MMORPG; meaning there is increased need for action, a little bit of excitement, a feeling of intense adventures and all that!

That obvious fact said, the concept of a Sith Empire with increased in-fighting fits very well to the (aforementioned) needs of the MMORPG! ;)

Therefore there was some necessity (...) to exaggerate more or less (rather more than less!) the concept of violence, hatred and in-fighting within the Sith Empire.

After all the Republic too (in the SWTOR Galaxy) isn't flawless: there is a lot of corruption, injustice, lack of vision, conflicts of interests resulting in a serious lack of coordination and all that.

 

The bottom line is that the players' characters have -and should have- a lot of opportunities to confront mighty adversaries, thus to rejoice, boost their ego, become satisfied and have fun...

 

 

Regarding the Sith, Lana Benico isn't the only responsible powerful Sith.

Darth Marr is a patriot also, he is very strict, absolutely determined and terrifying but he isn't exactly bloodthirsty, he doesn't kill for the killing...

Furthermore, Darth Marr's spirit became the one and only spiritual companion (during the dominion of the Eternal Empire) of such a person as Satele Shan is!! And he deserved it, therefore your complaints aren't absolutely justified.

There are a few more Sith that are quite responsible and rational, particularly Darth Vowrawn and -later- Darth Acina.

After all, the absence of The Immortal Emperor could be some explanation for the boost of the in-fighting among many Sith of all ranks... The most interesting examples are the coups of Darth Jadus and, then, that of Darth Malgus. In my opinion both coups are solid and justified...

 

 

All that said, it is true -of course- that you have a very strong point!

During the progression of the story-lines of Imperial characters I was thinking about all that too...

A coup is not only an attempt to seize the power, it's an attempt to restore the Order and the supremacy of the leader, therefore both Jadus and Malgus had a good point, that's OK...

But the lesser Sith?!? Is it conceivable that all these (relatively weak) Darths have the freedom to assassinate their peers and -by doing that- to constantly defy the chain of command, even an unstable one?!?

Well, I have to repeat that this is a necessity, one related to the MMORPG function of SWTOR...

 

But what should we think about some ... "true" Sith Empire?!?

Well, if I was The Immortal Emperor of the Sith Empire I'd permit (for obvious reasons, reasons with respect to "natural" selection) violent in-fighting, mostly among lower ranking Sith, before the start of the Imperial Campaign but one or two decades before its beginning I'd put some restrictions to all that. Just before the beginning of the Campaign I'd absolutely forbid any violent in-fighting, the war against the Republic is an extremely intense natural selection.

However it is natural that there will be latent -and even obvious- hatred and pathological competition (rivalry and animosity in fact) among some Sith during the war. Thus there is the necessity to, somehow, take care of this hatred in due time; otherwise there is the danger of a sudden, uncontrolled explosion of that animosity during some military operations and such.

There is some solution to all that, a tradition to gather many Sith in front of The Emperor and try to solve their differences. If this isn't feasible, The Immortal Emperor should consider either to direct those Sith to distant sectors of the Galaxy or to permit them to confront each other in a lethal duel! But only after The Emperor's permission and only in front of the Dark Council and the other Sith.

That arrangement seems to me that is in accordance with the Sith teachings but with the needs of the war effort also...

Edited by cunctatorg
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  • 3 weeks later...

While the fighting amongst the sith is a huge hinderance to the empire and does strike the advantage of being a sith it also is about survival of the fittest and those that should lead to keep the order fresh and strong. Its very much like packs of wild animals like wolves persay they will fight it out if 2 or dominate individuals are in the pack. Experience vs inexperience, wisedom vs stamina. The end fighting also is what makes the sith better fighters than the jedi they are trained to fight because they are constantly battling everyday for their right to live. At times it does get to the point it does weaken the empire. But right now as we see it the empire is stronger than the republic and the fractured jedi splinter factions. Sure a lot of it has to do with acina/vowrawn but some of that is because the sith are actually training for battles. Jedi's train their minds and emotions. We arent even to the dark days of the empire during the brotherhood of darkness area where there was end fighting and they were more political than anything.

 

The only reason the zakuul empire failed was because arcann and vaylin had no idea how to lead that empire. Arcann was all about showing up his father and his need for violence. He was a tactician but most of his wins came at the might of the fleet/skytroopers rather than the knights themselves. Vaylin wasn't a leader she was a living nuke basically in star wars. Her powers uncontrolled and harnessed she was nothing more than a ziost/nathema lvl valk or nihilus.

 

In the end the empire/s are better off with level headed individuals that can control the situations while bolstering their own troops in strength by weeding out the weak and allowing the strong to flourish while the weak still can slip the cracks which what was kind of happening after ATC. There were some power plays even within the council as they were trying to be leaders of the council and eventually surplant vitiate/tenebrae/valkorian and lord scourge/player wrath.

 

Honestly if the jedi had better battle training they wouldnt have lost coruscant/jedi temple and a few other worlds they would have been far better prepared. I dont really blame satele for that as much as i blame the foolishness with the jedi council and their too much blind faith in their code rather than actually being able to train their knights, medics, masters and so on. Which is why the jedi basically are in complete disarray right now even bigger exiled and splinter factions than during order 66. even to the point that some of the jedi factions were basically said to be fighting amongst themselves right now.

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That's a very interesting perspective / explanation.

 

The only counter argument that I can think of is that Strength does not mean Intelligence or wisdom. Just look at the Sith Inquisitor story. It is the most disgusting display of Sith culture. The inquisitor kills a darth, the dearth's lord politely retaliates. Your character spends the entire story being a complete idiot walking face first into danger and *cough cough cough* somehow manages to get unbelievable amount of political power because of his sheer dumb luck and brute strength in the force. Even the whole story in Corellia plays out as nothing more than selfish power grab that completely disregards any military strategy or lives of soldiers on the ground.

 

SI is the example of the terrible leadership who cares for nothing but personal gain. My question is how does a culture like this flourish?

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SI is the example of the terrible leadership who cares for nothing but personal gain. My question is how does a culture like this flourish?

 

Because, as I explained above, as is explained in the game, and in accessory material, until relatively recently Vitiate took a much more active role in the Empire and kept the Darths in line. If you read Revan, by Drew Karpyshyn, Vitiate wipes out the entire Dark Council because one of them is suggested to be a traitor. It is expressly said in the game that Vitiate kept the Darth's power plays and infighting from interfering with the Empire and Vitiate's plans. The Empire didn't begin to have the problems that are evident in the game until Vitiate was no longer there to control everything.

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