We aren't building any ships or shipyards because the ships aren't built until after the first part of the reforms are done. Which is 3 turns in total. And shipyards need to be built up to.
Exactly my point. Our ability to grow our fleet with home-grown construction is almost nil for the near future, and will only slowly ramp up as time goes on.
We also do not want the old Imperial Navy as that is a horribly ineffective organization
"Less effective" =/= "useless." We need numbers. There are a ton of numbers out there that can be brought into the fold. Seems simple enough. We don't even need to upgrade them right away, just set them to second-line duties while we re-educate their crews in our new fleet doctrine, which would free up our improved main fleet for potential offensive operations. Then when our shipyard capacity is up to snuff, we can refit the old-line stuff we get through defection up to our current spec. No one doubts these ships and crews would be inferior to what we're building. But inferior force is still force, inferior firepower is still firepower, and inferior soldiers are still soldiers.
This purist attitude you seem to have is
extremely wasteful, and would see us relegated to being a third-tier power at best, considering that literally every major opponent we're up against has vastly superior fleet strength, population, and logistical infrastructure. If we're going to do anything, we need to
grow. And the absolute fastest, most efficient and effective way of doing that is to co-opt what's already been built by the Empire, not thumbing our noses at it when we won't have the ability to grow significantly on our own for some time to come.
and their captains and crew are mostly filled with bad kind of Imperial officers the ones we don't want. We also wouldn't want to take them because if they already betrayed one or two factions that makes them unreliable.
None of these are as serious an obstacle as you're making them out to be. First of all, they aren't "filled" with the bad kind of Imperial officers. Like with any organization, most are just unimaginative plodders who do what they were trained to do. Those are easy enough to handle, as they will either accept the new training and become
our unimaginative plodders who do what
we train them to do, or they will be too inflexible, and we can fire them and promote a more talented underling.
If you're worried about the crews' loyalties, bring their dependents to our space and set them up with good housing and good schools/opportunities for their kids. Then you have both the carrot and the stick working for you, since there would always be the implicit threat that any betrayal could blow back on their families (we don't have to actually follow through on this, just the appearance that it's a possibility would be enough for most). With the officers who defect, we can have our intelligence service (and later our Force Order) investigate them to determine who's truly unreliable versus who actually believes in what we're trying to do.
This is all completely workable. All of the downsides of taking in large numbers of defectors can be compensated for in the short term, and eliminated in the long term. Right now, the Imperial military is facing a crisis of leadership. When every major warlord (with the possible exception of Kaine) is clearly driven by personal ambition and greed more than any ideology or patriotism, and when the "legitimate" Imperial authorities on Coruscant are busy purging each other and playing politics, doing their level best to weaken the Empire further, it should come as no surprise that ships and crews change sides so readily. But give them something they can
believe in again (since most were believers to one degree or another in the Empire's
stated ideals) and we will reap the benefits.
