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No discernible military experience, wasn't he a general in the clone wars? Ah but they wouldn't know that

Just change a few words in there and you basically described Trump's first 90 days in office. Vader is Elon.

Ohhh god vader is musk.

Dont tell him i said that, he will take it as a compliment

Might be right in general, but Ozzel did screw up. The Rebels at Hoth had little time to evacuate after running into the probe droid. The Empire could have easily camped the hyperspace exit from a distance and picked them all off. Ozzel chose to come in too close, and that made them vulnerable to the ground ion canon.

The whole rebellion should have died that day. Vader knows plenty enough about planetary sieges to figure this out.

It's still the height of stupidity to tell the evil wizard cyborg boss such stuff to their face, when they have the legal right to immediately kill you (as well as ability, from the cyborg parts if biting else).

Then again, he was probably brown-nosing for Tarkin, taking a gamble that he'd live and earn points with him... which actually ended up happening so I guess I have to retract my earlier statement about stupidity when it worked out so well for him.

It was still quite a risky move.

Ummm, Anakin Skywalker was highly regarded as a military strategist throughout the clone wars. Non conventional maybe, but highly effective

Behold! The power of storytelling and imagination when not every single detail is explicated upon and shoved in the audience's face!

So not a G, but just stupid.

Did he know the emperor was a Sith who had powers, or was he just one of billions or trillions of people who had never actually interacted with anyone who openly used the force?

Sure, later movies made force use way more commonly used within a couple decades of this guy's bold choice, but at the time of the movie's release it was supposed to be an uncommon thing that hadn't even been around for a very long time.

I mean, Han Solo did the same. I don't think that Lucas thought that it would really be much more than the three movies, and evidently didn't come up with much lore or backstory. I don't think they ever touched on what happened to Darth Vader and Sidious that put them into power (it's been a few years since I've seen them, could be wrong). Closest thing we got was a mention of the Clone Wars, with about no description of it.

There's very few Doyalist arguments in the replies here. Besides my own argument about how Lucas doesn't plan things out, but that's not exactly complimentary to the narrative.

Watsonian: there are very few Force users in the galaxy. At its height, the Jedi Order is a few million Jedi in a galaxy of trillions of sapient beings. Force users were always more legend than something people saw on the regular. If you ever saw one lightsaber in person, it'd be a day you remember forever. The propaganda job wasn't even that hard. Just pretend they never existed and most people will go on with their lives.

Even as far as Motti is concerned, the Jedi were never that prominent. Just a sad old religion. He would have internalized Imperial policy against Jedi, and he only makes any exception at all for Darth Vader because people above him say he's important.

That random force lady on Yavin that Andor met? Andor has a good reason to believe she's a charlatan. Pretty much anyone you meet claiming to have force powers, even before Order 66, is probably a grifter.

And do they do anything about it? Or is a certain amount of chokage to be expected as an occupational hazard on an Empire vessel?