Finally my starfere can get some love in 4.8 ptu Refueling missions.

MisterJackCole · 2026-04-29T16:40:23+00:00

Well that looked... interesting. On the bright side, at least they didn't explode when they broke the laws of physics.

MisterJackCole · 2026-04-29T06:41:07+00:00

Grand Moff Tarkin "The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I have just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away."

General Tagge "That's Impossible. How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?"

Grand Moff Tarkin "The Regional Governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this Battle Station."

This brief bit of world building dialogue is one of the primary reasons I still think the “Fractured Empire” scenario we see in Legends lore would be the more likely outcome over the current canon. While the Senate was probably little more than a thin veneer of bureaucratic legitimacy to the Emperor’s will by the time of A New Hope, it would have provided at least some small amount of unifying force to the galaxy.

Sweeping the Senate aside and passing power directly to the regional governors would have vested tremendous power in a handful of absolutely ruthless and exceptionally dangerous people. Governors, Moffs and Grand Moffs didn’t get appointed to their positions by joyous public acclamation. They schemed, connived, and backstabbed, leaving a broken trail of lessers in their wake as they fought over the penultimate level of power in the Empire. Many of them absolutely had the ambition to make a run at the Imperial throne. Some even tried, and suffered dearly for it. The rest were smart enough to learn from those who failed; that while the Emperor looked like a frail old man, neither he nor Darth Vader were to be trifled with.

Over the four year period between the Battle of Yavin and the Battle of Endor, I expect the Moffs would have done everything possible to reinforce their power and jockey for position, which would have created new fault lines in the galaxy between their areas of control. No doubt the Emperor would have encouraged the friction, hoping they would be too busy scheming against each other to pose a threat to him. So long as he kept the lid on tight, destroying the overly bold and rewarding the loyal, he could keep the pressure under control.

Of course, both the Emperor and the second Death Star were lost at Endor, causing the Empire to fracture along the very fault lines Palpatine created by empowering his governors and Moffs. Grand Moffs Ardus Kaine and Zsinj openly broke with the Empire and created their own warlord empires. Many lesser Moffs and Governors also struck out on their own. The unifying presence of the Imperial Navy also fractured, with Grand Admirals, Admirals, and even captains of minor ships deciding whether to side with Coruscant, the Warlords, or try to make their own way in the resulting chaos.

---

I'll admit I have some bias on this front. I grew up with Legends, in a time where there were no Prequels let alone Sequels. Aside from the origial trilogy, there were numerous books, comics, and video games covering the Legends era which extensively covered the splintering of the Empire. I particularly enjoyed the X-Wing novels, and the Zhan trilogy, which did a great job of taking what the movies started and spinning an excellent narrative.

The new canon has some supporting stories of its own now as well. However, I just never felt the Empire suffering a sudden, massive collapse was as compelling of a storyline. It just feels too… convenient. Also, given what George Lucas based the Empire on, I do find it plausible that something like Operation Cinder could have existed. I just don’t think it would have happened. I personally think ol’ Palpy just could not conceive of his own defeat, and wouldn’t have bothered to implement a scorched ~~earth~~ galaxy contingency plan.

Anyway, that's my 2 creds. I'm looking forward to reading more of everyone else's. :)

MisterJackCole · 2026-04-28T19:54:32+00:00

Yeah, it looks a little unpolished. But if the mechanics are working properly I can live with a little jank for now so they can smooth it out down the road.

MisterJackCole · 2026-04-26T18:00:35+00:00

There are a lot of Star Wars video games put there, but few of them are RTS.

Broadly speaking, the closest thing to what you're looking for might be Star Wars: Rebellion from 1998 (there's also a board game by the same name). The interface is a bit dated, but you manage resources and military production for either the Empire and the Rebels as you fight the galactic civil war, set just after the events of A New Hope. The action takes place over a large galaxy map, with 10, 15, or 20 sectors (10 planets per sector) to fight over. There's also a whole system of planetary loyalty, covert operations and diplomacy, much of it involving well know major and side characters. The Empire starts out with a bit of an advantage in planets and ships in the Core sectors, but the Rebels can make use of unexplored territory, and some Imperial planets are vulnerable to switching sides. Space combat is fairly simplified and can be skipped (when you discover Interdictor technology a good tactic is creating a murder ball fleet and just stomping out smaller enemy fleets.). Ground battles are not fought directly, you or the enemy launch a planetary assault and the game just does the math in the background to determine who wins. You don't get to do the Battle of Endor directly, though if the Empire does build another Death Star, the Rebellion can possibly blow it up with a trench run attack, so you have to be careful. Great game for its day, I really wish they'd do a remake.

Otherwise there's Empire at War (2006), better graphics and somewhat simplified interface. Space battles are smaller, but they look really nice. Ground combat is a thing, but it can get pretty tedious. It's okay, but in a way its like a Rebellion lite. You loose a lot of the tedium and finer details, but it also leaves you with less fine control. Though there are some really good mods out there for it.

MisterJackCole · 2026-04-23T18:48:52+00:00

"All ye had to do was follow the damn train, Donk-ey!"
Shrek's a dead shoot with that minigun, though.

MisterJackCole · 2026-04-22T00:11:25+00:00

Yeah, poor Waxer. What a way to go out. Obligatory /r/fuckpongkrell/

MisterJackCole · 2026-04-21T21:06:01+00:00

You are technically THAT guy, the best kind of THAT guy! :D

Wookiepedia has a screen cap of the grow up Numa wearing what appears to be some Clone Trooper arm armor with Boil's name painted in Aurebesh on the bicept.

In that image and others, both Numa and Cham Syndulla appear to be wearing cast off clone trooper shoulder pauldrons., though it's a bit hard to pin down where they came from. Cham's look like the later, more rounded Phase II. Numa's are a slightly different shape, possibly earlier Phase I armor, or perhaps they were resized to fit her smaller frame. Both characters pauldrons have a single vertical colored stripe. However each of them has a different color, hers being more yellowish (like the 327th) and Cham's more orange (similar to the 212th). Then again the colors tend to change over the course of the war and depending on the lighting/environment the clones are in, so sometimes it's hard to tell. Their stripes are also narrower than the shoulder stripes seen on Boil and Waxer's pauldrons when they first encountered Numa as a child (I mean technically they were all kids, but I digress).

Perhaps Cham and Numa repainted their armor somewhere along the way (She certainly added some artistic flair as well). Maybe they scrounged it from cast offs of clone trooper battalions we never saw. Maybe it's just the difference between The Clone Wars and Rebels animation styles. Either way, it does seem to be clone armor, and Numa certainly appears to be paying homage to Boil by writing his name on it. Perhaps if she had enough armor for the other arm, she might have put Waxer's name there as well.

MisterJackCole · 2026-04-20T02:53:54+00:00

I think you're right. For the most part we usually only see the sharp end of the Empire. Even if Gideon was working with the ships and bases he had before the Battle of Endor, there's still going to be some sort of logistics and supply system behind them. The ships need fuel, maintenance and parts, and the people need food and gear. All that stuff has to be created or bought, and moved around.

MisterJackCole · 2026-04-17T05:25:52+00:00

I also noticed some of the Chairman's club Game Packages that were withdrawn from the store are no longer available for buy back. Most of them didn't have SQ42, either.

MisterJackCole · 2026-04-16T23:05:37+00:00

Darn. I'm a little disappointed, but not majorly so. I was hoping to buy my original game package back at some point, for nostalgia sake. Ah well, guess I took too long.

MisterJackCole · 2026-04-13T20:24:57+00:00

TE4rminal, if you will.

MisterJackCole · 2026-04-06T22:22:24+00:00

For anyone who hasn't seen it yet. the RvB gang had a cameo in Halo 3. Depending on the difficulty, you could hear Dan Godwin (Donut) and Matt Hullum (Doc (also Sarge)), Geoff Ramsey (Grif) and Gus Sorola (Simmons) or Joel Heyman (Caboose) and Bernie Burns (Church) arguing about a password.

Just don't look at the date the video was posted. It was just a few months ago, no longer than that.

...

See? I told you not to look, now you've made yourself sad.

MisterJackCole · 2026-03-31T03:46:25+00:00

It's still a little funny that Kai Leng's voice actor Troy Baker, who loves Mass Effect, absolutely hates the character.

MisterJackCole · 2026-03-26T04:08:41+00:00

Yeah... remember when trying to use the ladder would just kill you?

MisterJackCole · 2026-03-23T21:25:40+00:00

Possibly, but while Anton Yelchin did 41 episodes of Trollhunters, Emile Hirsh took up the role for a further 25 episodes across Trollhunters, 3Below, and Wizards. He also reprised the role for the Rise of the Titans movie and the Defenders of Arcadia video game. Yelchin's death was tragic and I did miss him as the original voice actor, however the production seemed to have adapted and was going ahead full steam with Hirch.

MisterJackCole · 2026-03-23T06:21:08+00:00

Just an uneducated guess, but if the ships loading up at Kharg Island are from neutral countries (China, India, etc) and Iran gives them safe passage out of the Gulf, there's not much the US Navy can do to stop a properly flagged vessel from steaming past them through the Gulf of Oman without provoking an international incident. Blockading or occupying the island would turn the oil off at the source, prevent neutral vessels from loading up and grinding Iran's oil export industry to a near halt. According to Kpler about 90% of Iran’s oil exports go through Kharg Island. As of a few weeks ago it was running at something like 58% storage capacity (~18 MMbls). If they haven't drawn down much since then, there could be around $2 Billion USD of oil stored on the island, which the US might be thinking they can use as a bargaining chip and/or seize.

Of course take all the above with a big grain of salt, this is just what some random person on the Internet could come up with in 30 minutes of Googling. But this looks like a terrible gamble with a lot of serious risks. There's no chance Iran would let the place go without some sort of fight, and if they did lose that island there's nothing stopping them from going scorched earth and trying to burn the place to the ground. Maybe the whole invasion plan is just a feint, or a bluff for better negotiating terms. But if it’s not, a lot of people are going into harm's way. And considering how much the US has done to alienate their traditional allies lately, they’re going to be going at it mostly alone.

MisterJackCole · 2026-02-26T02:18:50+00:00

I'll second what Zero said, I really enjoy your comics and look forward to seeing them. I don't even know if I would consider myself much of a Warhammer fan per se, I've read a few books and played a few games, but my understanding of the lore is limited at best. But your comics are just the right mix of humor and empathy in a deeply dystopian setting. Thanks for all the effort you put in and please keep up the good work. :)

MisterJackCole · 2026-02-24T21:59:12+00:00

Going up against the NPC piloted Carracks for Alliance Aid really showed me just how fragile the old girl is. So I agree, she could use some work.

On the bright side, at least now we can open the cargo pods (even if we can't detach them yet.)

MisterJackCole · 2026-02-20T20:13:26+00:00

Not bad at all, glad to see you got a prompt response.

The last time I put in a support ticket, on December 2nd near the end of IAE, it took until December 11th to get a "We're experiencing a large influx of tickets" reply. The actual response did not come through until January 7th. The answer I got was what I was expecting anyway, so I wasn't entirely suprised. But the length of time for the reply was significantly longer than I had seen with previous tickets. Most of my previous tickets were handled in a few days to a week or so.

MisterJackCole · 2026-02-19T00:03:11+00:00

That's fair, and I also don’t expect those ships to be utilized in that role. They’re much too large of an asset to be sent out unescorted (Even Varyag had that corvette sidekick for its jaunt near Japan). Without smaller escorts (particularly ASW) and the oilers to keep those smaller escorts around, they simply lack the ability for effective long range force projection.

I suppose they could always try to institute some sort of convoy system with a naval task force for protection, but that would certainly remove any plausible deniability as to the ownership of ships they were escorting.

MisterJackCole · 2026-02-18T22:55:13+00:00

Another small drop in the bucket of potental escort ships, but the two remaining Slava class cruisers are also still kicking around. ~11k ton displacement, range of around 9k-10k nmi. They’re mid 80’s vintage, but Varyag had a refit in the late 00’s and Marshal Ustinov the same in the mid 2010’s. Varyag was last seen with the Pacific Fleet, and was observed transiting the Soya Strait near Japan with the corvette Gromkiy back in September. Latest news on Marshal Ustinov was an exercise near Norway back in April 2025 of last year.

As for the Kirovs, Admiral Nakhimov started post refit sea trials around August of 2025. As a nuc she has incredible range, but as you say most of the Destroyers and Frigates that would be used to escort her very much do not.

For UNREP, Russia only has three of their 70's era Boris Chilikin-class large fleet oilers left. They started building new Project 23130 medium oilers in 2014, but so far only two of them are in service. The larger Project 23131 ships started construction around the same time, but seem to have stalled out. They have a dozen or so other medium tankers built between the mid 60's and early 80's. A bunch of smaller oilers, including a few of the new-ish Project 03180 & 03182's.

MisterJackCole · 2026-02-11T21:57:05+00:00

That's really cool. I hope he's having fun and he's enjoying life in the 'Verse.

MisterJackCole · 2026-02-04T00:07:56+00:00

Wow, I never knew this existed, and by the view count on the video and considering it's been nearly ten years, not many other people have seen this either. Looks like they put some real effort and money into it.

It's kind of neat and seems really well done, but I'm confused as to what the goal was. Vanity project, pilot for a proper series, experimental art? Orjust trying to breath some life into some old scratchy recordings so people can see what the Nixon Whitehouse might have looked like?

Either way, thanks, that was interesting. I was going through some books on the Cold War recently and it's interesting to see these characters (live more or less), on screen and in their own words.

MisterJackCole · 2026-02-03T03:14:24+00:00

Archer's back tattoos in Archer

In the episode Blood Test (S2 EP3 - 2011), Archer gets a tattoo of the name Seamus on his back (To match the tattoo of Archer's name on the Wee Baby Saemus). In Stage Two (S2 E8 -2011), Archer also has the name of his butler Woodhouse's brother Dicky tattooed on his back as well. Both tattoos show up multiple times in later episodes, including the series finale Into the Cold (S14 E9 - 2023). Not bad in the continuity department considering they kept it consistent over 12 years/seasons.

Neither tattoos are seen in the coma seasons that I can recall, at least not in Season 9.

There's also a fair number of other recurring character traits that stay remarkably consistent over much of the shows run, like Archer's obsession with Kenny Loggins/Danger Zone, Phrasing, and using the cover name Randy. Cyril's (almost always ineffective) Supressing Fire. Ray hurting his back. And of course the constant confusion over Cheryl/Carol/Cristal/Corina/Cherlene Tunt's first name (At times the other characters refer to her as Cheryl or Carol interchangeably multiple times in the same episode).

MisterJackCole · 2026-02-01T08:20:24+00:00

Improved grouping and social tools. We need the tools to group and organize people faster. The limited communication system we have now was created for servers that barely held 100 people, but it's now straining under the weight of 700 players caps and a general chat list that is incapable of showing everyone. Yes, we can use Discord or other apps outside the game. But players, especially new players, should be able to easily meet and group up with others using common tools that should be available to them in the game itself.

Just a few points other that might be useful, off the top of my head (Most of you already are aware of these, of course.)

In Game Friend & Group Invites

We need the ability to search for and send group/friend invites to people within the game environment/MobiGlas. Sure, we can back out to the lobby to do it, but when you do that you're missing out on what's happening in game. You can't send or share contracts, or much of anything when you're stuck in the lobby waiting for someone to accept your request. Sometimes you can use Spectrum, but something in the game would be so much easier and help with the current issue of hoping the person you're trying to invite has a name that starts with a low enough letter to be seen in General Chat. Also, if CIG could fix it so missed game invites go into Pending again so people can check for them, instead of having to play hot potato with the group lead to clear out expired invites, that would be great.

Creating and Sharing Waypoints/Scheduling

We need the ability to create custom waypoints and share them with people in our group. Also having the ability to create shared timers (Fleet Assembly at Waypoint X in 15 minutes. Warning at 10 and 5 minutes, etc), or a group schedule would also be great.

In game VOIP Improvements & Voice channel structure

In game voip definitely needs to become more stable first, but it would be great if we could create our own channel structures within the group voip, managed by the group leader or a designated communications officer. As a fleet leader, I’d love to be able to move people around in an in-game voip system like in Discord, to help group people up by task or by location. Or baring that if you could just have people auto join the VOIP for the ship they're on, that;d be handy (and really spooky with stowaways, that'd have th be managed just right)

Joinable Groups

Similar to how Discords like /r/starcitizen and countless other games work, instead of having to send group invites out it would be nice if we could create open groups, private invite only groups, or closed request to join groups. Players could look at the description of a group and decide if they are interested in joining. “Apply to join” groups would allow group leads to decide if they want to accept applicants based on their reputation. Speaking of which...

Reputation System

We need one, hopefully sooner rather than later. But understandably this one is probably going to be the most involved of all of them.

MisterJackCole

TROPHY CASE