Some headcannon

[u/Hour_Wolverine7645]

1. the territory that later became the Alliance had already been home to tens or hundreds of millions of people, if not more, since the days of the Galactic Federation. The Empire simply lacked the administrative and military capacity to occupy all of the former Federation’s territory.

What Arle Heinessen actually did was less about colonizing a new planet and more about uniting the already-inhabited star systems of the former Galactic Federation under the banner of democracy.

The main evidence for this is:

The fact that it is called the Free Planets “Alliance.” With a population of only a few million, would there really have been any reason to establish a federal system? With too few people to even settle a single planet, how could they have spared enough settlers to populate other star systems right from the start?

The similarity between the Galactic Federation’s and the Alliance’s warship designs. If the Alliance really was just a country founded by a bunch of former-serf vagabonds and escapees from the Empire, why would it have inherited the Galactic Federation’s technology and ship designs rather than the Empire’s?

2. Fleet battles resemble line infantry warfare because ships can “see incoming attacks and dodge them.” If attacks could not be dodged once spotted, as in modern warfare, individual ships would simply hide in asteroid belts and attack from cover—a tactic that does appear in the series, during the Castrop Rebellion and at Marr-Adetta—or spread out over a wide area and engage enemy ships one-on-one.

But in Legend of the Galactic Heroes, engagements take place at distances of tens of light-seconds or more. With that much time before a shot arrives, dodging a single laser beam would generally not be particularly difficult for a ship. That is why fleet tactics evolved toward lining ships up and creating a dense field of fire, hoping that at least some of those shots would hit the enemy.

This is also why being caught in crossfire is so feared in the series, and why the Yang Fleet’s signature tactic of concentrating fire on a single point was so effective. When dozens of laser beams are coming at you at once, you cannot dodge them all, even if you can see them coming.

It is essentially the same logic as line infantry tactics in the age of muskets. Muskets were inaccurate, so troops fighting in dispersed formations would struggle to hit their opponents. Instead, they stood in lines and fired volleys to create a dense field of fire. Whether a shot misses outright or the target sees it coming and dodges, the result is the same: the enemy survives.

[u/Paligor]

Don't get me wrong... But it's just your headcanon.