Death Star and the Eclipse SSD

[Galvatron]

If they could downplay the WDs' invulnerability and emphasize that they were heavily guarded by conventional warships, I wouldn't object so much. Hell, I also think it'd be a good idea to retcon the WDs as Separatist "automated factory ships" that the Empire captured and mothballed following the end of the Clone Wars. To me, that's better than having the resurgent Empire constantly churning out new shit.

[Connor MacLeod]

In a sense it is "new shit" because only Palpatine is crazy enough to unleash all this stuff (and he was crazy.) Everything he tossed out in DE was literally a potential disaster: Think of the escalation that would occur is everyone was using hyperspatial munitions and automated combat factory ships.

Like I said before, they probably have restrictions of all kinds preventing their normal usage in warfare (or even in any large-scale, cept perhaps by certain grroups like starship corporations) because of the potential abuse (ie terrorists getting their hands on something like a world devastator) Palpy is going mad at this point in time so he's probably not going to obey even the letter of such restrictions (he's pretty much thrown his "kindly odl man disguise" away by now.)

[Illuminatus Primus]

I realize you're kind of committed to the "crazy Palpatine" theory of Dark Empire (and especially its sequels), but there's not really any evidence that Palpatine went out of his way or intended to reveal himself to the galaxy in DE. Actually, one could argue he intended not to be noticed, and to just rule through proxies. Recall that the Empire reunifies and they're speculating about who could be behind the new leadership right before the World Devastator attacks begin. If Palpatine had succeeded in keeping Luke and Leia than no one would have found out about his return. The Empire was still proceeding forward before he was compromised and then just (apparently) opted for the balls-out god-emperor approach.

[Galvatron]

In a sense it is "new shit" because only Palpatine is crazy enough to unleash all this stuff (and he was crazy.) Everything he tossed out in DE was literally a potential disaster: Think of the escalation that would occur is everyone was using hyperspatial munitions and automated combat factory ships.

Yeah, it'd be like the Clone Wars all over again.

All I'm saying is that we could retcon all these droidcentric superweapons, fighters and ground troops as retrofitted Separatist materiel instead of treating them as brand new, wanktastic inventions of the resurgent (yet still diminished) Empire of the reborn Palpatine.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Why should droid warfare elements gone completely out of style? What's wrong with the war droids of DE2? I kind of like them in that they at least leave room for standard infantry troops, unlike the Prequel droids which demonstrate infantry and manpower CAN be replaced (though its done incompetently).

[Galvatron]

Nothing's wrong with them. I'd just rather explain the droid-based weapons as relics of a bygone war that the reborn Empire retrofitted for duty and pressed into service out of sheer practicality versus everything being designed and built from scratch despite six years of territorial losses and erosion of their industrial base.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Nothing's wrong with them. I'd just rather explain the droid-based weapons as relics of a bygone war that the reborn Empire retrofitted for duty and pressed into service out of sheer practicality versus everything being designed and built from scratch despite six years of territorial losses and attrition having eroded their industrial base.

The SD-series was already in service, but I'll concede on the TIE droids, which I never liked. The World Devestators had been in prior development though, but it really does not make sense why they don't appear again. I would've lowered their OMFG SUPERWEAPON HAX factor and more just emphasized how their use on an inhabited world was Imperial brutality if not totally unprecedented or requiring a unique tool. I would've made the Battle of Calamari more obviously a Leningrad/Stalingrad-esque political and psychological dramatic contest between the Empire and New Republic. WDs or relatives could have been in service before or after but their use in Mon Cal was novel and its failure leads to the rejection of doctrine calling for them on the front line. Overall, less wank, more drama, less plot device.

[Galvatron]

Likewise, I'd downgrade the invincibility of the WDs to somewhere around the level of the AT-ATs as they were depicted in TESB: impervious to light-artillery and the T-47s' blaster cannons, yet probably not to a direct hit from a even a light turbolaser.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Likewise, I'd downgrade the invincibility of the WDs to somewhere around the level of the AT-ATs as they were depicted in TESB: impervious to light-artillery and the T-47s' blaster cannons, yet probably not to a direct hit from a even a light turbolaser.

Why? What the hell are you talking about? These things are 2.2 km long! They're many more times the size of a Star Destroyer! I think its completely fair that they could be hulled by fleet bombardment but that would torch much of Dac.

[Galvatron]

I meant proportional to their size, not directly equal to the AT-ATs.

[Darth Wong]

Yeah, one of the most annoying things about the whole "WD swallows an ISD" incident was the implication that it could effortlessly shrug off the ISD's turbolaser fire in the process. Certainly, one would have to be quite mad to attempt to swallow an enemy ship (which entails getting very close to it) if its weapons are dangerous to you.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Of course. The WD and GG superweapon problem is really endemic of a bigger writer's problem, the easy dramatic plot device. If you think about it, though it doesn't use an annoyingly contrived one-off weapon as the device, many of the Thrawn Trilogy's dramatic turns require you to think a raid on a single shipyard by a couple ISDs is something deserving the personal attention of the leader of the Empire in a galactic war, and that a couple thousand cloning cylinders can make all the difference. There's too much reliance on contrived Achilles' heels and weak links to build up the drama.

[Ender]

Yeah, one of the most annoying things about the whole "WD swallows an ISD" incident was the implication that it could effortlessly shrug off the ISD's turbolaser fire in the process. Certainly, one would have to be quite mad to attempt to swallow an enemy ship (which entails getting very close to it) if its weapons are dangerous to you.

Well the angle it came at, I'm not sure an ISD could depress the primary weapons to fire upon. This would makes attacking and consuming the ISD considerably easier.

[Connor MacLeod]

They refitted those ISDs after they captured them and made some changes of their own. Its quite possible they never retained the original armament. Even then, we dont know what the state of the ship was when it got consumed either.

Besides, the Silencer-7, the ship that ate the ISD, was over 2 miles long and a mile high... it was considerably more massive (even allowing for the factories n shit) than a mere ISD.

[Darth Hoth]

I thought the dialogue from the sequence in question said the ship's armaments were already disabled when the Devastator swallowed it? That makes better sense.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Now that I think about it, there are a few things that I find it hard to accept. Swallowing a ship like that while breaking it up is going to lead to massive failures such as the hypermatter reactor going boom. Can the Devastator take a shockwave of that sort traveling through the .. whatever is that part of the WD is called? It will be even worse if the reactor exploded at close range.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Now that I think about it, there are a few things that I find it hard to accept. Swallowing a ship like that while breaking it up is going to lead to massive failures such as the hypermatter reactor going boom. Can the Devastator take a shockwave of that sort traveling through the .. whatever is that part of the WD is called? It will be even worse if the reactor exploded at close range.

Why must reactors fail catastrophically? There's no evidence to suggest this. ROTS actually has plenty of mission-killed starships that merely break up with little violence, or in the case of the CSS Invisible Hand, crash intact. The total potential energy of most large starships' fuel should be much higher than the violence of the observed explosions anyway: even the explosive failures we see are controlled to a degree. There's no reason to think hypermatter reactors are that volatile. Consider the cases of real world ships. How often do they explode? I think Mike even has a brain-bug on his essay dedicated to this.

[Ender]

Now that I think about it, there are a few things that I find it hard to accept. Swallowing a ship like that while breaking it up is going to lead to massive failures such as the hypermatter reactor going boom. Can the Devastator take a shockwave of that sort traveling through the .. whatever is that part of the WD is called? It will be even worse if the reactor exploded at close range.

Why must reactors fail catastrophically? There's no evidence to suggest this. ROTS actually has plenty of mission-killed starships that merely break up with little violence, or in the case of the CSS Invisible Hand, crash intact. The total potential energy of most large starships' fuel should be much higher than the violence of the observed explosions anyway: even the explosive failures we see are controlled to a degree. There's no reason to think hypermatter reactors are that volatile. Consider the cases of real world ships. How often do they explode? I think Mike even has a brain-bug on his essay dedicated to this.

Difference is scale. The fuel doesn't need to be intrinsically unstable at those levels. Even the barest fraction of energy in the system being released should be a massive explosion. This is also what we see when the Death Stars explode - damage the reactors and while you won't have it release all the energy currently in the core, much less the fuel mass, it is still a huge amount being dumped into the environment.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Difference is scale. The fuel doesn't need to be intrinsically unstable at those levels. Even the barest fraction of energy in the system being released should be a massive explosion. This is also what we see when the Death Stars explode - damage the reactors and while you won't have it release all the energy currently in the core, much less the fuel mass, it is still a huge amount being dumped into the environment.

The Death Stars in both cases were destroyed by deliberately setting up a kind of run-away chain-reaction in the primary reactor core, I don't think that's a baseline example for the passively safe or unsafe characteristics of Star Wars warships. The Invisible Hand was capable of being pounded til a mission kill and subsequently breaking in half while its engines were providing significant (possibly maximum) thrust with the reactors being located in the front half of the ship. Still no catastrophic failure resulting in the dismemberment of the ship. And even if there's a comparatively high energy release, if the WD can weather warship turbolaser blasts, it should be able to shrug off some uncontrolled released here and there.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Why must reactors fail catastrophically? There's no evidence to suggest this. ROTS actually has plenty of mission-killed starships that merely break up with little violence, or in the case of the CSS Invisible Hand, crash intact. The total potential energy of most large starships' fuel should be much higher than the violence of the observed explosions anyway: even the explosive failures we see are controlled to a degree. There's no reason to think hypermatter reactors are that volatile. Consider the cases of real world ships. How often do they explode? I think Mike even has a brain-bug on his essay dedicated to this.

Trouble would be, that there have been instances where a ship blew up because of the reactor. In Death Star, one ISD was cited as having exploded due to the reactor, and then in Before the Storm, you had one ISD that was a wreck because the core blew up due to equipment failure.

Perhaps if the safeties kicked in and prevented the ship from blowing up, otherwise, failure which, would lead to the said ship suffering catastrophic failure.

[Darth Wong]

Well, even a modern car can blow up (albeit not in a high-explosive manner) if its fuel tank is hit the right way. It's not as if anyone is saying that normal vehicles should be assumed never to blow up due to their power generation/storage systems. The problem is that in Star Trek, the reactor is ridiculously unstable; a ship can be perfectly fine in every apparent respect and then suddenly explode because of a computer glitch. And the explosion is actually more powerful than any of its weapons, because we have explicit information that the reactor contains a large amount of excess unreacted fuel at any given time.

[Ender]

The Death Stars in both cases were destroyed by deliberately setting up a kind of run-away chain-reaction in the primary reactor core, I don't think that's a baseline example for the passively safe or unsafe characteristics of Star Wars warships.

No. The energy release for both is so far beneath its typical operating power that it is absolutely a great example. The reactor is usually sitting at a reaction with about 10^33 joules each second, whereas what we saw was something like one trillionth of that. This is in a scenario where enemy actions led to, as you said , "a kind of run-away chain-reaction" was triggered. So when deliberate actions are taken to both greatly increase the energy being released in the core and disable safety precautions so it will destroy it, the safety precautions were still sufficient to tamp down the release. But only by a bit.

The Invisible Hand was capable of being pounded til a mission kill and subsequently breaking in half while its engines were providing significant (possibly maximum) thrust with the reactors being located in the front half of the ship.

Bullshit. Video We see the engines start to fire at 0:26 and the ship snaps at 0:28 Two seconds go by before the ship breaks in half. That did nothing to alter the ships velocity or vector. That isn't anything close to full burn and you god damn know it.

Still no catastrophic failure resulting in the dismemberment of the ship. And even if there's a comparatively high energy release, if the WD can weather warship turbolaser blasts, it should be able to shrug off some uncontrolled released here and there.

They weather TL blasts by virtue of their shields. Said shields would not be in place over the mouth while it is consuming a ship.

[Pelranius]

Speaking of shields, I thought that the Carida planetary shield would have been able to handle a supernova event? After all, consider the amount of time the Alderaanian shields resisted the Death Star's superlaser.

Maybe I ought to work that in a fanfic somewhere.

[Ender]

Speaking of shields, I thought that the Carida planetary shield would have been able to handle a supernova event? After all, consider the amount of time the Alderaanian shields resisted the Death Star's superlaser.

Maybe I ought to work that in a fanfic somewhere.

Haven't run the numbers, but I'd imagine that even if it were possible for the shield to deflect the energy, the mass of the star moving at a nice fraction of c would be sufficient to crush the shield generators through momentum transfer. And even if it could block that, unless the shields block neutrinos the neutrino flux would kill everything on the planet.

[Cal Wright]

The Galaxy Gun missile must have used some kind of trick to get through planetary shields, since it appears to simply pass through them. Once a countermeasure is developed against that (which seems inevitable, otherwise every starship in the fleet would eventually have this trick fitted to it), then the Galaxy Gun becomes useless.

There is no countermeasure against overwhelming brute force. That's why the Death Star still rules.

I pretty much stopped reading after this post. I know everyone is trying to throw in figures and prove what's most practical. However, a battle station the size of a small moon that can zap a planet in one single shot and shrug off you're entire compliment of countermeasures is all you need. Seriously, a completed DS II is not going to feel the Imperial fleet bearing down on it, and is still going to destroy the planet out from under you. Coupled with it's ability to hit capital ships at a constant rate and in short time. The ROTJ novel has them spinning to take out Endor even after taking on the Rebel fleet in such a manner.

What the fuck is an Eclipse, or even an entire fleet of those eu pos going to do to that?

Who ever stated resupply, is thinking to linear. The DS II can jump to the resupply station. (I'm just throwing that in there. It's an entirely different argument.)

Who all is forgetting the damn thing is bristling with turbolasers? Yeah, good job. ( I know the main argument was about the super laser technology itself, but since it's turned into a strategic discussion, I figure I'd throw that in there too.) They didn't build the Death Stars just to show up, blow up and sit there in space. It was still designed with engagement in mind. Thank you and good night!