[Strategia_In_Ultima]

As for the SW Galactic Empire, simple:

The larger part of the population is human or at least looks *exactly* like a human. Han Solo looked like your ordinary, everyday Homo sapiens sapiens, yet his species is stated as Correlian. If we take this into account, and the fact that the Empire also hires mercs (like Greedo and IG-88), AND the fact that their ships are designed for "fear effect" you get a pretty powerful force. ISDs could strike fear into the hearts of almost any independent star system with a rather small defense force. In the Expanded Universe, we read that after the fall of the Empire, there were still Imperial commanders controlling entire star systems *simply by having an ISD present for fear effect*. And an ISD is more of a carrier than a "true" warship. OK, so they've got turbolaser batteries, but at longer range they're pretty ineffective. However, a single ISD can carry dozens of wings of TIE Fighters and Bombers, which can operate at long range if necessary. If a squadron of TIE Bombers does a flyby of a city, they'll very likely surrender unless they've got either ample ground defense turrets or fighters of their own. Now, if they have ground turrets, that's simple; the TIE Bombers come in, evading as much fire as possible, and pelt the batteries with their weapons, or they're simply obliterated from orbit by the ISD. If they've got a fighter defense force of their own, well then, simply launch all 70(!) wings (IIRC) of TIE Fighters present on the ISD (and considering it's 70 *wings* and not 70 *fighters*, and taking into consideration the fact that a wing is 5 or so fighters IIRC.....) and simply overwhelm their defenses by sheer numerical advantage. That way, they were able to keep the Empire under their heel for so long, until a foolish group of idiotic youngsters were so dumb to try and challenge the might of the Empire itself.