What was the strength of the Empire's fleet around the time of the Battle of Yavin, specifically capital ships (star destroyers, dreadnoughts, etc)?
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A little off-topic and speculation: The Empire didn't know about the weakness in the plans until they "analyzed [the Rebels] attack pattern." Considering the had the actual location of the Rebel base and knew they could successfully destroy a planet, they had no reason for a fleet to accompany the first Death Star, a mistake which they ultimately fixed when constructing the second. My guess is the fleet was pretty hefty, but really ramped up after the first Death Star was destroyed.– Michael IrigoyenSep 5, 2014 at 13:00
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1 Answer
According to C-canon EU[0] (Timothy Zahn's "Specter of the Past"):
But it was. And down deep, Pellaeon was sure Ardiff knew it as well as he did. A thousand systems left, out of an Empire that had once spanned a million. Two hundred Star Destroyers remaining from a Fleet that had once included over twenty-five thousand of them.
Whether that number was close to the maximum stated at 0ABY is unknown, but presumably it was correct order of magnitude.
[0] - obviously, post-ROTJ C-canon has been "Legendized" by Darth Mickey as of 2014, so YMMV in how you personally assess the canonicity of this factoid
answered Sep 5, 2014 at 3:05
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3Zahn got that information from the West End games sourcebooks. It's as close to canon as anything is in this period. Besides, it was written before the dark times. Before the prequels. That makes it 100% accurate in my books. Sep 5, 2014 at 6:27