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Lets say Palpatine gathers all the dark side cults he can find and afew other force sensitve beings to fight darth krayt's one sith. Who would win in an all out battle?

Palpatine
darth vader
dark side elite
shadow guard
saber guard
sith acolytes
hands
prophets of the dark side
all the dark side adepts
inquisitorious
any other dark siders that served the emperor
nightsisters
all the warriors from the lost tribe of the sith
blackguard

vs

reborn Darth krayt
one sith

**** sith troopers do not count bc that would be too much of an edge

Palpatines army.

add the scorerors of rhand as well

The deciding factor is Force Storms, mostly. Everyone else is there to run interference for Sidious.

Also Sidious has battle meditation as well so his troops are boosted while Krayts are demoralized.

Oh, you have the whole Lost Tribe and Nightsisters in there? I guess that'll make up numbers... with 10,000 One Sith they still may still have the edge, but the lost tribe is fairly plentiful.

Most of Sidious's have been deliberately been kept from knowing the good stuff, because Sidious doesn't want potential rivals, or even lesser sith, he wants limited pawns. Ones like the Prophets and many of the adepts are really speedbumps, the Prophets weren't even meant to fight.

Of the ones not purposefully hamstrung, the Nightsisters can't stand up to the Lost Tribe, who in turn are weaker than One Sith.


Originally posted by EmperorSidious2
Also Sidious has battle meditation as well so his troops are boosted while Krayts are demoralized.

I think how easy they're slaughtering the 'Dark Side Elite,' Inquisition, acolytes, and so on, will make up any morale difference. They've faced battle meditation before, and have sorcery of their own.


Originally posted by Angelalex242
The deciding factor is Force Storms, mostly. Everyone else is there to run interference for Sidious.

This is so true, it is 'operation meatshield for Sidious,' whether his people can last long enough while his storms do their thing- because someone just needs to get close enough to disrupt his concentration, and then it's a straight-up battle.


If this is Original Recipe Sidious and not clone, then the One Sith wins.

If clone, there's too many force users in between the One Sith and Palpatine, he can send storms at a distance.

I think palpatine's army would win after a very heated battle. Bc not only would the emperor use battle meditation during the fight, others such as supreme prophet kadann would use battle med. as well bc he is not really a fighter but he would be one of the strongest out there.

also, it would not just be palpatine that krayt would have to worry about, he also has to worry about darth vader, darish vol, kadann, gethzerion, gavar khai, cronal, lumiya, maybe even joruus c'baoth, and other strong dark siders.

and the real numbers for palpatine would come from the nightsisters, lost tribe, and the black guard and they were not under palpatine's influence so they would not be a bunch of chumps like some of the other groups would be.

plus if the all the inquisitors were just as powerful as the one from star wars rebels they would be a tough fight as well and there would be plenty of them.

Palpatine throws a force storm.

yeh vader, darish vol, gethzerion and others would lay waste to dozens of one sith while palpatine was making his force storm

Yea, that's the thing. With force storms, the makeup of the army doesn't really matter, all they need to do is slow things down, and they can do that.

It's only if there's no force storms that it's an army battle.



Originally posted by Darth Demenos
I think palpatine's army would win after a very heated battle. Bc not only would the emperor use battle meditation during the fight, others such as supreme prophet kadann would use battle med. as well bc he is not really a fighter but he would be one of the strongest out there.

also, it would not just be palpatine that krayt would have to worry about, he also has to worry about darth vader, darish vol, kadann, gethzerion, gavar khai, cronal, lumiya, maybe even joruus c'baoth, and other strong dark siders.

Eh, the conventional side doesn't matter much thanks to the storms. But if we assume no force storms.... even with battle meditation, the rank and file is 99% of everyone, and the One Sith have the advantages there.


The One Sith do have things like sorcerers with illusions and such as well. Krayt can make his presence felt in every One Sith, which should help throw off effects on them. Where Wyyrlock goes, Lost Tribe, Inquisitors, and so on, are going to be stabbing each other in the face more than they're going to be fighting OS.

Very importantly, don't forget the One Sith are trained to work together and fight as one.

Many on the other side are not- the Lost Tribe do (but without the battlefield experience of the OS), but the Nightsisters fight in small groups, and ones like the Inquisitors and many adepts are never taught to work together in significant groups. Let alone with other groups! The Dark Side Elite had several cases of turning on each other. The Hands were actively told other Hands didn't exist. Most of these groups are egotistical as heck and think *they're* the Emperor's right hand and others should just listen to them. Yadda yadda.

It's One Sith, one army, vs an army (lost tribe), a collection of tribes, and a couple smatterings of individuals under various group titles who are not organized units. Most of whom have both significant egos and no experience with fights that have more than a few people.

Battle meditation (assuming Krayt doesn't disrupt it), or even the higher number of elite individuals, isn't going to completely make up for the fact that you've got a ton of different factions, most of whom are unfamiliar with the battlefield, most of whom are at a training and experience disadvantage to the sith in front of them.




But your average nightsister is not all that impressive (consider the ones who tagged along with Asajj against Dooku, and consider they were the ones picked for a very important mission. That's a more-skilled Nightsister), and the Lost Tribe doesn't have as much force knowledge as non-lost tribe sith, the Jedi were able to inflict a couple casualties for every one taken in return in the Coruscant battle IIrc, and were still stronger than Nightsisters.

Toss in that the One Sith may *still* have the notable number edge, even with those...

Military force is One Sith, as the big numbers are not as well trained, and only the Lost Tribe is at all set up to fight as a large group to begin with. The others much less so!

The badass individuals will inflict casualties to be sure, but the One Sith have done this song and dance before, on Ossus, against half a fully trained full Jedi order.




They aren't, they really aren't. While the Rebels one isn't one of the strongest- there's two or three stronger individuals I can think of, Jerec most notably, and High Inquisitor Torbin- most really are basically just dark adepts, often former padawans, given a lightsaber and training on interrogation and sneaking up on people. Many of them, even ones with higher rank, are complete jokes, who only defeat minor Jedi due to threatening others to make them stand down, having stormtrooper backup, and such. There is a case where a High Inquisitor plus two more Inquisitors took on a padawan and lost.


Plus they're a pretty small organization, just a few dozen I believe. But really, most of them are just there to kill undertrained padawans and interrogate people, or for their deaths to alert the empire to send someone who's actually dangerous.

Originally posted by Q99
Yea, that's the thing. With force storms, the makeup of the army doesn't really matter, all they need to do is slow things down, and they can do that.

It's only if there's no force storms that it's an army battle.

Eh, the conventional side doesn't matter much thanks to the storms. But if we assume no force storms.... even with battle meditation, the rank and file is 99% of everyone, and the One Sith have the advantages there.


The One Sith do have things like sorcerers with illusions and such as well. Krayt can make his presence felt in every One Sith, which should help throw off effects on them. Where Wyyrlock goes, Lost Tribe, Inquisitors, and so on, are going to be stabbing each other in the face more than they're going to be fighting OS.

Very importantly, don't forget the One Sith are trained to work together and fight as one.

Many on the other side are not- the Lost Tribe do (but without the battlefield experience of the OS), but the Nightsisters fight in small groups, and ones like the Inquisitors and many adepts are never taught to work together in significant groups. Let alone with other groups! The Dark Side Elite had several cases of turning on each other. The Hands were actively told other Hands didn't exist. Most of these groups are egotistical as heck and think *they're* the Emperor's right hand and others should just listen to them. Yadda yadda.

It's One Sith, one army, vs an army (lost tribe), a collection of tribes, and a couple smatterings of individuals under various group titles who are not organized units. Most of whom have both significant egos and no experience with fights that have more than a few people.

Battle meditation (assuming Krayt doesn't disrupt it), or even the higher number of elite individuals, isn't going to completely make up for the fact that you've got a ton of different factions, most of whom are unfamiliar with the battlefield, most of whom are at a training and experience disadvantage to the sith in front of them.

Military force is One Sith, as the big numbers are not as well trained, and only the Lost Tribe is at all set up to fight as a large group to begin with. The others much less so!

The badass individuals will inflict casualties to be sure, but the One Sith have done this song and dance before, on Ossus, against half a fully trained full Jedi order. los


To me this would be a battle be tween 2 whole groups, yes some of them are split into different sub-groups but if palpatine has gathered all of them together, which would take alittle while, he would have definately brought them under his influence in some way whether by teaching them to serve him loyally or taking over their minds. So they would definately fight together for him bc he would tell them to.

and lets say they were not under his influence, they would still fight together bc like all darksiders they would take advantage of their situation and fight to defeat their opponents by staying together, bc they would realise that the individual groups would get slaughtered.but i am pretty sure that by the time palpatine had gathered them all together the vast majority if not all would be serving him willingly if not loyally.....................bc its palpatine.

Also, i took ego out of the equation bc i wanted it to just be a simple battle and no back bighting and all that.

Im pretty sure that palpatine, darish vol and gethzerion could easily stop wyyrlok and krayts from influencing their warriors. also, i agree with you that most of the warriors for palpatine would not have battle field experience but they would still have years of training and fighting experience. plus this not a typical battle with explosion and laser bolts flying around everywhere, it is just a lightsaber battle.

they may even could get some training in before they had to fight the one sith as well.

also, i just thought of this, cronal and the other scorcers of rhand would have darksight and would be able to use that against the one sith to manipulate the future. if they would even need to.

It's kind of a 'halfassed army whose commander has nukes vs. better army who doesn't have nukes.'

And the nukes decide.

Originally posted by Darth Demenos
To me this would be a battle be tween 2 whole groups, yes some of them are split into different sub-groups but if palpatine has gathered all of them together, which would take alittle while, he would have definately brought them under his influence in some way whether by teaching them to serve him loyally or taking over their minds. So they would definately fight together for him bc he would tell them to.

Sure, they'd fight together, but they aren't trained to fight together, and many of them have never been on a battlefield in their life.

The problem isn't willingness, it's that this is not what they're used to and they are not skilled at doing it.

They've never discussed battlefield tactics, they often haven't even been trained in teamwork, plus they're still often a bit undertrained in force compared to their opposites (or in some cases like the prophets, trained in force but undertrained in saber). A lot of them will have bad instincts for a fight- giving in to a rage and powering forward can work in solo fights but is more likely to break up your group and get you all killed in a battle. Waiting for the right opportunity to strike and catch your opponent off guard is great for an assassin, but a bunch of assassins acting like that results in no-one setting up the opportunities and many being killed. Even going by instinct and what they think works best, the different groups and their different styles means they're likely to get in each other's way fairly often.

Example scenario: The One Sith have an apparent weak point in their line. The Nightsisters go for it- And so do the Inquisitors! They physically get in each others way, slowing their attack, and opening a hole in their line. They work to sort themselves out, but that takes a minute while meanwhile the One Sith unit actually trained in battle goes to strike the exposed forces, while the other One Sith move to support them and close up gaps. The Nightsisters pull back figuring that's the right move because they're used to hit and run tribal fighting, while the Inquisitors thought the Nightsisters were going to reinforce because they're used to having blindly loyal stormies backing them. Further divided, the Inquisitors get confused and smashed, the Nightsisters take casualties falling back to their line, while the Lost Tribe is scrambling to regroup and push back a hole made by both groups leaving their position and the One Sith hit with their wedge. Seeing the enemy recovering and possibly threatening to cut off their attack, the One Sith pull back before that can happen and never get cut off. They suffer minor to moderate casualties while the opposing groups eat take big hits and heavy casualties to entire lost units.


What you basically have is a large group of Dark Siders serving Sidious that potentially are a good army, if you had, say, two-three years to teach and drill them in how to work as an army and use each other's tactics to their advantage.



The One Sith have fought in groups against Jedi also trained to fight in groups, and done so for years. They've fought Imperial and Republic armies. They've got a large number of seasoned veterans, darths who've lead units against Jedi and Imperial Knights.

Legacy is full of examples of groups of Sith fighting groups of force users. Like, in one of the early issues (I think issue 1 or 2), five sith attack four jedi. The five sith slay a Master and a Knight pretty easily, before in turn are slain by the other two, Wolf Sazen and Shado Vao.

Teams like that are worth three times their number in Nightsisters and Lost Tribe sith pretty easily, and there's *tons* of teams like that.




Originally posted by Angelalex242
It's kind of a 'halfassed army whose commander has nukes vs. better army who doesn't have nukes.'

And the nukes decide.


Exactly.

Like, let's say it'd take an hour for the OS conventional forces to reduce the Sid Army forces to a handful of surviving badasses, were there no force storms.


In an hour, with no interruptions, Sidious could easily kill thousands of One Sith. If they stay in big groups, maybe even all of them.

The best way to avoid getting stormed is to spread out, *but* that'd be giving up most of the OS organization advantage, so it'd just drag out the defeat as the storms kill fewer but the armies can pile on small parts.

To make a big thrust concentrated thrust is the best way to pierce a defensive around a key asset like Sidious (who merely needs to be distracted from making storms), *but* a concentrated thrust is just asking for the storms to be directed there and wipe out the attack anyway. And if there's two thrusts, Sids can send his army one way, use a light delaying force in the other direction, hit the second with storms, then once it's gone, hit the first one. Take out two big attacks for only minor casualties.

In order to have the slightest chance, the OS would need to attack too many points for them to be stormed, without making each one weak enough to be stopped... which is probably not even possible, not with the individual badasses being enough to blunt weaker thrusts.

To put it another way, sithed if they do, sithed if they don't.


Nukes win.

this is not necessarily a tactical battle, its supposed to be more of a gang fight where everyone would kinda just fighting and they would just fight the first person they saw.

if they are all serving sidious, they would not necessarily still be clinging to their old groups, i doubt sidious would let them do that, bc they would form ties and possibly try to overthrow him. sidious is without a doubt one of the smartest individuals in the star wars universe.they would most likey be intermingled all through the large group.

i doubt the OS would be trained to fight with tactics like a normal army bc they are not and are not necessarily intended to be a traditional army bc they are supposed to rule the glaxy as a group and their individuals would probably be trained in battle tactics but trained to lead stormtrooper squads and battalions and fleets etc... and from everything i have seen they are trained like the old sith with every individual having his/her own master after they learned the basics

and i believe the people in the sith army would do the same thing as a OS team would against a group of jedi..........individuals would fight individuals. plus if there were the same amount of people side they theoretically would not be able to over power them bc they would have the same amountof people as you do............but no one really knows how many would be on each side bc it is never specified in the stories.


i will admit that i did not really think this through as far as mentioning the details and the way i wanted it set up. i just typed out the basics kinda.

so i apologise

in heinz site one of the biggest details i did not think about, was giving the sith army a couple years to train.

Originally posted by Darth Demenos
this is not necessarily a tactical battle, its supposed to be more of a gang fight where everyone would kinda just fighting and they would just fight the first person they saw.

Honestly, Krayt's army wins by default then. You restricted his Sith Troopers and gave Palpatine Nightsisters, the entire Lost Tribe, etc.

Seems like you're trying to skew it towards the guy you have in your signature.

Krayt's army WRECKS.

Originally posted by Darth Demenos

how does he win by default? neither team fights like lets say the roman army where they have to use battle formations to win. i have read the legacy series and i never saw the OS use really any type of tavtics when fighting large groups. like when they attacked ossus, when the sith actually got on the ground they just ran in there and started fighting.............with stormtroopers.

Keep in mind, we largely saw the end of the battle at the late stages, where Kol and Sazen were defending the evacuation transport, and it really did look like Kol Skywalker might've been close to the last Jedi standing. And yes, they had stormies, but we also saw plenty of just sith on jedi fighting. We saw a group attacking Kol in a coordinated manner.

To use an example I already brought up, the five who ambushed Shado Vao and Wolf Sazen on Kessel also showed coordination and skill.

Or the attack against Emperor Fel and his party of Imperial Knights, for a group vs group battle.


Stryfe, Azard, Nihl, they're all military leaders. All of the One Sith are trained to follow orders. Sith are attached to infantry divisions and follow directs along with them. And we see One Sith fight together in groups all the time.


We regularly see groups of sith lead by a higher ranking sith and following their orders. They have a basic level of organization with units they have experience with, are used to following orders, have worked together with very large groups of these units, and know what they're doing.







Not a normal gun-wielding armor, but a force user army, to be sure. They fought in battle against several thousand Jedi.

Some lead stormies and similar, but deployments of groups of sith are common.

And note how someone with experience leading Stormtroopers in battles at least has real battlefield experience. Most Inquisitors may order some troopers around, but have never done anything large-scale with them or had to worry about tactics or even enemy units, just 'shoot that person while I go after them' or such. The Rebels Inquisitor left leading troops entirely to the actual military officer.




That's even worse! Now instead of at least fighting alongside people who fight similarly and they know, fellow nightsisters, Lost Tribe, Inquisitors, and such, they're next to people who they don't know the fighting style of and need to improvise with.

It's one thing to not know what the next unit over will do, it's quite another to be in a mish-mash unit.


Sidious is smart, but he's not a military command, he's always used other for that (like, Vader, for an obvious). Even so, he should know full well that mixing the people up without coherency training is just going to create problems.


What's needed isn't how they're set up, it's training in how to fight in battles.




One Sith do group attacks all the time. Whether they're several piling on one (Kol Skywalker, Antares Draco), or a group all coordinating their attacks on multiple targets, they work together.

Heck, when fighting a powerful foe, Celeste Morne with the Muur talisman, Krayt brought in Maladi to combine their force powers even though he already had the edge.




If that was true, there'd be no need for generals.

No, in a battle like this, how you maneuver lets you put more of your fighters against fewer of theirs, put your strong troops against their weak, deny their strong troops opportunity to engage your vulnerabilities, and so on.

Way back in the war of the Jedi vs the Legion of Lettow, the numbers were similar but it was specifically the Jedi's better coordination and willingness to work together rather than fight as individuals that won the day.





The writer of legacy says perhaps as much as ten thousand One Sith.

Most of the force organizations under Palpatine, we know their numbers at least in rough. The Inquisitors have sometimes been described as having 'dozens' of lesser inquisitors, so under a hundred is a fair bet. Dark Side Elite, 9. And so on. None of them are numerous, because that's the point, Sidious wants a bundle of small organizations that are no real threat to him and each specialized in what they do. So he didn't make a big dark side order and he kept the ones he did have weak.

Nightsisters and Lost Tribe, less-so... but neither ever deployed as many numbers, at least. The Lost Tribe outnumber the NJO they fought, but the NJO only had 800 Jedi at the time. The Nightsisters are somewhat kept in check by the light side tribes.




They did take out a whole half the Jedi order, thousands of Jedi, and engaged in a purge for the next eight years.

They may not all individually have fought Jedi, but most leaders of small groups of Sith have likely faced Jedi, and there is a lot of institutional experience against other force user. I.e. even if you're a sith who hasn't fought a Jedi, you know and train with other sith who have.







It *is* a lot like basketball.

You know the Dream Team? The famous, Olympic team with Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Magic Johnson, and so on?


In training, they lost a match to a college team.

See, the coach knew that his players were absurdly talented, the worst on their squad being better than just about anyone else, and felt they didn't need to practice together as a result.

Soooo he decided to give them bad orders. Have the wrong people guarding the wrong members of the opposition. When they adjusted, make substitutions so they'd be thrown off their game again. Badly timed time outs. That sort of thing.


And the most talented basketball team that had ever existed in the world up to that point lost to a team that couldn't beat any pro squad with any individual dream team member on it.


As a result, the players got the message, practiced together, got coordinated with their talented people, and became untouchable.

That is how this is like basketball.


Now, keep in mind that aside from the lack of training together, meaning they're similarly lack coordination, a lot of the members of Sidious's army are just less trained period, or trained for very specific not-battle conditions.... the One Sith is the equivalent of pro teams. The Lost Tribe a college team, the Nightsisters some small groups of players, while many of the others have only played one on one, if that.






Oh, like Angelalex242, as long as Sidious has force storms, it's like a halfassed army with a nuke.

It doesn't matter if the One Sith are a better army if Sidious can take out hundreds and hundreds every time he drops a storm, and he can do so whereever the OS are strongest, scattering forces and making martial skill and coordination really not matter too much.

The Palpatine army is an uncoordinated mass of two large groups and a dozen smaller ones, that cannot hope to win on their own, but can hold while force storms are dropped and do the job.


No force storms, then the individual badassness of the likes of Vader can't turn the tide, because there'll be too much disadvantage in the rank and file, too little coordination, and that'll give the One Sith way too much number advantage.


Even the likes of Vader will be tired by dozens of foes before having to take on, say, Wyyrlock, Saarai, Havoc, and a dozen lesser sith masters at the same time. And so on, and because there is such a basic difference in general coordination and battlefield ability, the One Sith will have that much number to send against the badasses and keep some of their strongest fresh.

ok im not debating with all of that lol there's just too much to type out and that would take a long time.

I do agree with some of what you are saying though. especially the last parts.

ok so let's go with this..... i should have said this from the beginning but i did not think asbout it

if palpatine had gathered his people and had them train for a few years.......bc it would not take as long as a normal perosn would bc "alot" of them would have already learned how to use a lightsaber and all of them would know how to use the force to at least some degree. so they would just be honing their skills, learning new ones, learning to submit themselves to the darkside and to call on it more, learning to fight together, growing stronger in the force etc....

how do you think things would play out after all this? on neutral ground and neither team knows anything about the other one. granted some of the OS would know a good bit about sidious.

Maybe, but at that point they really wouldn't be the listed groups any more, they'd be a new group made from them that often will be a lot different than their classic forms, and doing so is pretty antithetical to Rule of Two teachings (which is why Bane hated the One Sith, and why Vergere left A'Sharad to the Vong).

It's hard to tell how good they'd be, because we're talking about a pretty hypothetical scenario and depends somewhat on specifics of the training if we're talking more than just work-together-on-battlefield training. And there's a number of them where it's hard to tell whether their weakness is just the poor training or actual weakness in the force.

In terms of most of the army, the fact that the One Sith is trained from a young age and often willing to die for the cause, and have actually done something like this before, may still give them some edge, but properly trained up to work together, the other side may be close enough for the badasses like Sidious, Vader, Gethzerion, and such to grant a win. It'd be a proper fight at least.... well, putting aside the force storms. As always, presence of force storms wins an army battle, period.




The One Sith also picked up one of the more promising members of the Lost Tribe at the end of that book cycle, so they have info on *them* too. Plus, Lomi Plo was a Nightsister One Sith, so they've got info on at least some of the tribes there. In the early days, Krayt did covertly recruit promising individuals he could find from other groups to his own order.

Vergere would be with Palpatine's army and does know who A'Sharad is, which is something at least, but information on forces and such largely slides one way for obvious reasons.

Heh. I almost wonder if Palpatine would be better off sending his metric crapton of Stormtroopers in against the One Sith. They may not be force sensitive, but there sure are a lot of them, and they're actually trained to work together as military units. Might actually get through more enemies then random nightsisters or lost tribe.

Put Thrawn in charge of 'em. Should make a dent.

Put a fleet commander in charge of ground forces?....Logic..

Yea. I mean, Thrawn's a genius and all, and may have some land combat knowledge, but it's not his area.

Lesse, on Palpatine's side, the land generals would be Vader, Sedriss QL, and the leaders of the Lost Tribe.

On Krayt's side, Nihl and Stryfe are the primary land generals, especially Nihl who was a Nagai warlord before he was a Sith, and Krayt was a Jedi General back in the Clone Wars.

Does Sidious's backup Battle Meditation guy do him any good?

Supposedly, some other guy is doing the BM for him at Endor. Or at least supporting him.

Originally posted by Angelalex242
Does Sidious's backup Battle Meditation guy do him any good?

Supposedly, some other guy is doing the BM for him at Endor. Or at least supporting him.

That helps. Should prevent some breaking and running in bad spots and such. BM can only help so much, but it's a plus.

He's a Grand Admiral btw, so not focused on ground warfare from a command standpoint, but if he meditates while Vader and Sedriss command that should be good enough.

Originally posted by Angelalex242
Heh. I almost wonder if Palpatine would be better off sending his metric crapton of Stormtroopers in against the One Sith. They may not be force sensitive, but there sure are a lot of them, and they're actually trained to work together as military units. Might actually get through more enemies then random nightsisters or lost tribe.

I do wonder how the two conventional armies of each side would do... though once you're throwing in stormies, you're getting further from force users ^^ And force users have traditionally done a very good job at decapitation attacks and such to mess up larger forces of non-sensitives.

Well, Battle Meditation does wonders for stormtroopers, hence Sidious's backup guy.

It helps, but not *that* much.

Well, the ROTJ books make it seem like the entire fighting spirit of the Empire was based on BM. Either Sidious' or backup guy's, but BM nonetheless.

Hence, how the rebels mopped up the empire with far less ships once it was gone. Maybe losing it hurts far more then having it helps. I dunno.

Keep in mind, the Battle Meditation dropped at the same time their Emperor and thing they were protecting died, which was not long after their flagship died, the Executor being where many of the Empire's top officers were.

At the start of the battle there were four Grand Admirals (the ones actually running the battle, from the Death Star), plus Vader and the Emperor, plus the Executor's officers. All gone. And their land standing orders were 'prevent the rebels from escaping,' so plan-wise that's no help.

Furthermore, with the Emperor gone, several lesser admirals present started thinking of their own political futures and preserving their forces rather than winning the fight, and the chain of command there was muddled enough for them to get away with pulling back on their own initiative.


So yea, they lost battle meditation, but if they still had clear leadership that worked that would've been a temporary disruption. It only became a route when admirals and captains began leaving out of self-interest.