Death Star and the Eclipse SSD

[Illuminatus Primus]

Isn't this the guy whose magnum opus was either directed by or ghostwritten by Palpatine? The Tarkin Doctrine is more than just the Death Star, it was a philosophy towards government and even if the DS wasn't 'practical' in a volumetric sense it's valuable as a symbol through sheer scale.

Valuable by factors of millions of times necessary scale? Its my experience that if you do not have to reach for silly unrealistic crap like pure psychological or whimsical motives for something like a vessel millions of times larger than closest analog. Especially when something thousands of times smaller like the Executor-class and Eclipse-class was considered quite psychologically powerful in its own right. Unless the bulk has a function, I do not see the marginal cost of the additional scale to be worth it. In this case there is a fine explanation: a smaller vessel or a equal weight in very small vessels could not have generated a single beam of such intensity as the Death Star I, and were thus less capable at the heavy siegecraft function it filled.

Anyway, the fact it was written by Palpatine and all the rest still does not liberate them from concerns of economy or concealability; the Death Star was not disclosed to the Imperial Senate, and it was the source of considerable opposition to the policies of the state and obstruction to operators like Tarkin. So I don't think it can be treated as trivial.

If you're going to define 'bombardment fleet' as 'single' or 'what it says in some stupid book' when we're talking about more 'efficient' uses of the DS's volume (ie huge wodges of starships far in excess of the Imperial Sourcebook's 'bombardment fleets'), go ahead. Defeating the rebellion and putting a strangehold on the galaxy could probably have been achieved with billions of ISDs, but that didn't meet the political goals.

The problem was not the Rebellion as much as opposition from within the Senate; the authoritarians have not completely take over by ANH, its their final barrier to genuine autocracy. The purpose of the Death Star is that in conjunction with the conventional warmaking capacity of the inflated peacetime Imperial Armed Forces, it can suppress any dissent, with the ability of the opposition to successfully mount a civil war significantly decreased.

Likewise a starship-scale superlaser could have 'killed' Alderaan in a few shots (if we accept the EU silliness, anyway, which personally I don't) but again, doesn't have the shock value.

If the evidence is not reliable, why are we going by it? The intensity of the Eclipse beam is too low to defeat a shield which held off planetary-scattering energies consistently for tenths of a second.

Can someone explain to me how 'an eternity for a c-propagating beam' is relevant when we know the time and the wattage? We can estimate the order of energy the shield recieved before the planet was destroyed, it's just a really big number.

Of course, and we can scale from "continent searing" and see that the Eclipse firepower threshold is much too low. And of course there are planetary shields which probably can be defeated by Eclipse-scale siege weapons, thus allowing us to fix the discrepency.

The whole Eclipse thing has been discussed before, and you either accept the EU thing where it is 1/3 (or something) of the DS weapon or you scale from the reactor sizes/fuel/etc and figure it's probably much less, which makes the DS far more 'logical' than people in this thread seem to think (political justification aside).

Of course, that's what I've tried to emphasize.

[Illuminatus Primus]

I don't think we're disagreeing here. That's my entire point, actually. Galvatron's argument is that the existence of smaller superweapons makes the Death Star "less impressive", which frankly is a style over substance argument, becuase the technology to build the Death Star existed decades (more likely millennia, due to tech stagnation in Star Wars) before. The fact they made it bigger was what made the Death Star so powerful but that doesn't make it the be-all end-all of superlaser technology...the Eclipse and Sovereign for example, have superlasers that are adequately powerful for their purpose, which is to kill a planet. Even if it takes like twenty of them to equal a Death Star the fact that you can build THOUSANDS for the price of one Death Star just makes them more economical, not less practical. As far as i can see what you're saying is that the Death Star was unique because it's size was astronomically larger than any superlaser that had been built before, and i don't deny this. My point was that smaller, more tactically practical superweapons (like Eclipses, Sovereigns, Darksaber, Wold Devastators) are a logical outgrowth of the idea.

It still robs the filmic weapon of its narrative "umph" and tries to outshine it. And it begs annoying questions like, "why are characters in the film building shit for cock-measuring alone? Is that what the suspense comes from?" Stuff like this is annoying when it is aggravated by the EU. I understand completely where Galvy's coming from. Especially because its based on loads of stupid unscientific no-limits comic book reasoning.

[18-Till-I-Die]

I don't think it robs it of umph at all, but then i never thought the Death Star was very cool to begin with and it always struck me as impractical from a military perspective. Personally i would have preferred if the McGuffin had been something more like cypher codes or something, in that respect it would have seemed more logical to me.

But even if that's true, it's a style over substance argument and, with all respect, completely irrelevent as to why we should or should not have smaller superweapons in the EU or otherwise. Indeed i've seen no argument against the Eclipse or World Devastators (or Darksaber, or Sun Crusher) that has ever actually adressed any in-universe reason why these things would be "wrong" or "bad".

From a military perspective it makes sense to have tiers to any weapon system. The Death Stars, Galaxy Gun and Sun Crusher would be strategic weapons--expensive, powerful, difficult to reproduce. Eclipses, Sovereigns, World Devastators and smaller mobile superlasers (like Darksaber) would be tactical superweapons so that you have fleet or even task force level capacity to destroy planets and crack planetary shields. There is nothing really wrong or bad, in-universe, about this idea and while one can argue it's "wanky" or "makes the movies look stupid" (i would disagree) the fact is that in-universe it's perfectly logical to have more than one, giant McGuffin-scale weapons platform and billions of smaller gnatlike ones.

[FOG3]

To be fair the actual reactor plant which we actually see on the DS2 and the DS1 in schematic was a rather insignificant portion of the vessels volume and Star Wars vessels in the movie era are not good about not wasting considerable amounts of craft volume.

You saw the excessively huge hangar bays, the excessively large hallways, and the large voids around the terminals Obiwan was accessing just like everybody else. Don't pretend they weren't there. Nothing about the Death Stars ever makes a solid case they used their volume efficiently.

[Darth Hoth]

I don't think it robs it of umph at all, but then i never thought the Death Star was very cool to begin with and it always struck me as impractical from a military perspective. Personally i would have preferred if the McGuffin had been something more like cypher codes or something, in that respect it would have seemed more logical to me.

But even if that's true, it's a style over substance argument and, with all respect, completely irrelevent as to why we should or should not have smaller superweapons in the EU or otherwise. Indeed i've seen no argument against the Eclipse or World Devastators (or Darksaber, or Sun Crusher) that has ever actually adressed any in-universe reason why these things would be "wrong" or "bad".

From a military perspective it makes sense to have tiers to any weapon system. The Death Stars, Galaxy Gun and Sun Crusher would be strategic weapons--expensive, powerful, difficult to reproduce. Eclipses, Sovereigns, World Devastators and smaller mobile superlasers (like Darksaber) would be tactical superweapons so that you have fleet or even task force level capacity to destroy planets and crack planetary shields. There is nothing really wrong or bad, in-universe, about this idea and while one can argue it's "wanky" or "makes the movies look stupid" (i would disagree) the fact is that in-universe it's perfectly logical to have more than one, giant McGuffin-scale weapons platform and billions of smaller gnatlike ones.

The scale of some few EU works, such as DE, does make the films appear minimalist. Which they are, to a large extent; for just one example, even though Traviss is the one infamous for it, Lucas was the one who first set the "200,000 units" number (and it is only by a liberal interpretation that we can argue that would not mean individual clones, which was plainly the author's intent).

As for the Sun Crusher, it makes no sense because it is pulled out of nowhere by writer's fiat, given abilities that are not representative of the universe as such (engines and uber-armour that allows it to punch through tens of metres of neutronium-reinforced unobtainium armour unharmed??). It does not fit the level of technology otherwise displayed in the universe, and it apparently has no impact of any kind after it was destroyed (one would think uber armour that can withstand a superlaser should have obvious military applications . . . ).

[Darth Hoth]

How do you figure that? HIMS Eclipse is thousands of times less massive than the first Death Star. And the Alderaan deflector shield held off the blast for fractions of a second. There's no evidence to suggest Eclipse can produce an equally effective blast, considering that if you plot the performance of known reactors, the ISD scales up correctly to the Death Star I; the Eclipse would have to be an extreme outlier which is never apparently duplicated. The explanation offered by the DESB, that of a "coupled tachyon charge" is scientifically incoherent and incorrect. Not to mention its a no-limits fallacy to assume because HIMS Eclipse can defeat a planetary deflector shield it can defeat any existing or theoretical planetary deflector shield of arbitrary strength. Consider the shield protecting Coruscant in the weeks following its fall to the Neo-Republican forces, it was significantly weaker than the Hoth or Alderaanian shield, as an Executor-class vessel was capable of defeating it with salvos from beneath to permit its escape. It is much more reasonable to suggest the Eclipse minimalist superlaser is capable of defeating some deflector shields, but that some of the strongest, such as Alderaan's, are above its capacity to defeat alone.

Consider this discussion, please.

Ah, that. In my defence, I can only say that I have changed since back then. I am still an inclusionist, but a rational one, not the Wookieepedia type.

[Illuminatus Primus]

I don't think it robs it of umph at all, but then i never thought the Death Star was very cool to begin with and it always struck me as impractical from a military perspective. Personally i would have preferred if the McGuffin had been something more like cypher codes or something, in that respect it would have seemed more logical to me.

That's just is, you decided from the start that the Death Star was not a real weapon. If you assume the characters are sincere and serious, then the best premise is that it is real and performs an important role. In which case the Eclipse makes no fucking sense.

But even if that's true, it's a style over substance argument and, with all respect, completely irrelevent as to why we should or should not have smaller superweapons in the EU or otherwise. Indeed i've seen no argument against the Eclipse or World Devastators (or Darksaber, or Sun Crusher) that has ever actually adressed any in-universe reason why these things would be "wrong" or "bad".

I don't think there's anything wrong with Eclipse, I just think assigning to it capabilities comparable to the Death Star is ridiculous and reeks of EU shitting on scientific thinking.

From a military perspective it makes sense to have tiers to any weapon system. The Death Stars, Galaxy Gun and Sun Crusher would be strategic weapons--expensive, powerful, difficult to reproduce. Eclipses, Sovereigns, World Devastators and smaller mobile superlasers (like Darksaber) would be tactical superweapons so that you have fleet or even task force level capacity to destroy planets and crack planetary shields. There is nothing really wrong or bad, in-universe, about this idea and while one can argue it's "wanky" or "makes the movies look stupid" (i would disagree) the fact is that in-universe it's perfectly logical to have more than one, giant McGuffin-scale weapons platform and billions of smaller gnatlike ones.

You're missing the point. I agree other siege craft should be useful, but the Death Star, if one wants to entertain it as serious even for a moment (I do), than it fulfills a completely unequaled and un-substitutable role by being able to crack Alderaan's.

[Illuminatus Primus]

The scale of some few EU works, such as DE, does make the films appear minimalist. Which they are, to a large extent; for just one example, even though Traviss is the one infamous for it, Lucas was the one who first set the "200,000 units" number (and it is only by a liberal interpretation that we can argue that would not mean individual clones, which was plainly the author's intent).

OT is a different story, of course. The Death Stars are equivalent to billions of Star Destroyers, so DE is quite outclassed. ROTS implies combat actions (not even a set piece battle, mind you, but an attempted hit-and-run which runs afoul of local defense and some reinforcements) in the thousands to tens of thousands.

As for the Sun Crusher, it makes no sense because it is pulled out of nowhere by writer's fiat, given abilities that are not representative of the universe as such (engines and uber-armour that allows it to punch through tens of metres of neutronium-reinforced unobtainium armour unharmed??). It does not fit the level of technology otherwise displayed in the universe, and it apparently has no impact of any kind after it was destroyed (one would think uber armour that can withstand a superlaser should have obvious military applications . . . ).

Right. The litmus test I employ for invasive plot devices are ones that "beg annoying questions" about the rest of the setting, and ones which are plot-contained by use of reset buttons (YV invasion, Sun Crusher, I'm looking at you).

[Darth Hoth]

OT is a different story, of course. The Death Stars are equivalent to billions of Star Destroyers, so DE is quite outclassed. ROTS implies combat actions (not even a set piece battle, mind you, but an attempted hit-and-run which runs afoul of local defense and some reinforcements) in the thousands to tens of thousands.

OT is a different story, but it does have problems of its own (the Imperial fleet is shown as quite small, the mention of "thousands" of probe 'droids, the end scenes clearly implying that immediately after the Emperor's death, the Empire just crumbled and died, and others). The Death Star is, of course, a good aid against belittlers. The ROTS intro battle I do not even need to say why it was stupid, I think.

Right. The litmus test I employ for invasive plot devices are ones that "beg annoying questions" about the rest of the setting, and ones which are plot-contained by use of reset buttons (YV invasion, Sun Crusher, I'm looking at you).

The Galaxy Gun probably falls under this as well, sad to say, as do some depictions of cloning.

[18-Till-I-Die]

But see, this whole argument boils down to pure BS, no offense, but there is no practical reason that the Eclipse or smaller superlasers, like the Darksaber, make no sense. And considering the existence of massive construction projects LIKE the Death Star, the fact that they have something like World Devastators actually makes MORE sense, because it handily explains how they were able to harvest and transport all that raw material so easily--it even makes city planets like Coruscant vastly more plausable.

The Death Star makes sense, not purely because it can crack a heavy planetary shield--they could, as i mentioned, just hit the thing with a moon if need be, as they can clearly move immense masses through hyperspace and at relativistic velocities (battle planetoids, both DS models, worldships, et al). If that's the only "un-substituable" reason to have it then it sucks, again i'm not trying to be offensive but that reasoning is terribly flawed. The Death Star is a strategic weapon, nothing more, it was designed as a weapon of terror like the Tsar Bomb (canon agrees with this, as it was actually IMPERIAL POLICY at the time!) and it's usefulness in full scale war against an enemy that could bring equal power, force-on-force, would be somewhat limited...against say, hypothetically, Civilization or a more pronounced Vong invasion. It'd be impractical because of the logistics train, the need for fuel, the fact you have only one at a time, among other reasons. By that same token the Galaxy Gun or Sun Crusher would also be strategic weapons, useful as part of a massive attack, and logical to a degree, but impractical on the battlefield.

THAT is what the Death Stars were useful for, terror weapons, strategic weapons. In a large scale conflict it's more likely that smaller, more agile, and most of all more economical (i.e, u can has moar) superweapons like the Eclipses, Sovereigns and Wold Devastators would come into play. They could be built in the thousands, WDs even mass producing themselves if need be, and even smaller, less powerful but more economical superlasers (like Darksaber) or things like Torpedo Spheres, Battle Planetoids and the like would be present as well.

That, you see, is what would eventually happen. Death Stars and Galaxy Guns aside, in a battle against enemies of equal footing, in a real war (not against a rebellion, or uprising) they would more likely than not deploy less powerful but more practical siege engines, superweapons and super-capital ships with the intent of deploying them by the thousands and thousands. For the paltry (compared to the DS 2) price of several thousand Eclipses or Sovereigns, or even less for Darksaber clones, every fleet could have independant superweapons capable of defeating most shields and causing ELEs on any planet they're used against...which is all that is really required in war, to have sufficient power to kill your enemy for the right, most economical price. That's why WWII superguns like "the Dora", or railroad guns from WWI, were eventually rendered impractical as you could build and deploy thousands upon thousands of assualt guns and howitzers for the same price. The World Devastators are so useful in wartime the strategy just writes itself...if every fleet had a large, Silencer-7 type one or more, then they'd be effectivey self-sufficient and able to live off the land AND equipped with a tactical scale superweapon to deploy whenever needed. During an invasion of enemy territory, this would be invaluable.

*sigh* I'm babbling in the most nerdy way possible, and i just realized i'm devising strategy for whole armies that don't exist, but you get my point. Cinematic drama is irrelevent, logically the whole thing makes sense in-universe, and with all due respect, your basically making a blatant style over substance argument.

[Serafina]

Well, the Death Star as a terror weapon makes sense if you consider the following:

The Empire faced no real military threat at the time of DS I & II.
Sure, there was the rebellion - but that war was not about a vast industrial base, counqering planets and so on - it was about POLITICS. Robbing the Rebellion of public support would have crumbled it.

What is more terrifiying: A massive ship, able to crack a planet, but somewhat defeatable?
Or knowing that your enemy has an indestructable, massive battlestation, able to wipe out whole fleets with ease and wiping you out within a second?

The Death Stars were intended as a power demonstration, stating "you have no hope to fight us. Resistance is futile".

[Illuminatus Primus]

Darth Hoth:

OT is a different story, but it does have problems of its own (the Imperial fleet is shown as quite small, the mention of "thousands" of probe 'droids, the end scenes clearly implying that immediately after the Emperor's death, the Empire just crumbled and died, and others). The Death Star is, of course, a good aid against belittlers. The ROTS intro battle I do not even need to say why it was stupid, I think.

Agreed in general, of course.

The Galaxy Gun probably falls under this as well, sad to say, as do some depictions of cloning.

I don't like the Galaxy Gun. Of course its superficial thinking to imagine it is still a perfect replacement for the Death Star considering its accomplishments are often due to work arounds rather than brute force like the Death Star. Presumably one could modify their shielding to resist the magic shield penetrator of the Galaxy Gun, or come up with a better way of intercepting it (simply using lots of mass shadow mines would go a long way by forcing the thing out of hyperspace far from the target), or come up with some magitech to inhibit the magic chain reaction it can catalyze in otherwise stable matter. And of course, its much easier to actually destroy it directly than a Death Star.

What did you think about cloning?

18-Till-I-Die:

But see, this whole argument boils down to pure BS, no offense, but there is no practical reason that the Eclipse or smaller superlasers, like the Darksaber, make no sense. And considering the existence of massive construction projects LIKE the Death Star, the fact that they have something like World Devastators actually makes MORE sense, because it handily explains how they were able to harvest and transport all that raw material so easily--it even makes city planets like Coruscant vastly more plausable.

I didn't say Eclipse was stupid, I said it having equal capability to the much larger Death Star is stupid. Why is it stupid? Because the heat capacity, fuel capacity, reactor volume, and weapon volume of the latter would be implied to be irrelevant to their relative outputs. That is scientific ignoramus thinking. Anyone who has even introduction lab experience should understand intuitively why such size matters. To treat it as if it does not is retarded. No context analogies with nuclear weapons is retarded - new weapons are more accurate (would you say the effectiveness of the DS is due to precision?) and they are more efficient (an infinitesimal fraction of output lost as waste heat will already immolate the DS).

No offense, but your own argument seems to be gut-feel say-so. Which is to say, your argument is worthless.

The Death Star makes sense, not purely because it can crack a heavy planetary shield--they could, as i mentioned, just hit the thing with a moon if need be,

The kinetic energy of the Alderaanian shot was much greater than that of a moon hitting the planet. Unless that moon is moving at very high relativistic velocities, in which case you're still expending as much energy as the Death Star blast, only its not reusable and less efficiently directed.

as they can clearly move immense masses through hyperspace and at relativistic velocities (battle planetoids, both DS models, worldships, et al).

Yes, and the energy requirements for moving these things around are comparable to those of firing the DS superlaser itself, idiot. There's no cheating with thermodynamics. What the DS provides is a secure, precise, reusable firing mechanism which can penetrate behind enemy lines and destroy the most well-fortified targets with impunity before returning to secure areas.

If that's the only "un-substituable" reason to have it then it sucks, again i'm not trying to be offensive but that reasoning is terribly flawed.

They could not tolerate the risk of civil war from impractically assailable member worlds capable of fielding defenses capable of forestalling conventional assault at length, giving time to effect a political challenge or summon allies to their cause.

The Death Star is a strategic weapon, nothing more, it was designed as a weapon of terror like the Tsar Bomb

Cold War planners knew the Tsar Bomb could not be deployed in real circumstances (the bomber carrier couldn't even close its bomb-bay doors and had to be especially modified!), so you're wrong, again.

(canon agrees with this, as it was actually IMPERIAL POLICY at the time!) and it's usefulness in full scale war against an enemy that could bring equal power, force-on-force, would be somewhat limited...against say, hypothetically, Civilization or a more pronounced Vong invasion.

So what? Its value is only judged according to the required mission and the likelihood of it being required and how badly it would be needed. Your scenarios are red herrings. Furthermore, Imperial policy was not demand obedience through the threat of force, not force itself. Without the Death Star, applications of force against Alderaan and analogues would be difficult. According to you it was already possible, and therefore the threat of force already existed. Experienced statesmen and warfighters like Bail Organa and the Alliance sympathizers and staff are not going to be magically awed and politically squashed by impractical displays of unnecessary overkill that sap strength by opportunity cost from other areas of the Imperial State; they are intimidated by novel capability and having nowhere to hide.

It'd be impractical because of the logistics train, the need for fuel, the fact you have only one at a time, among other reasons. By that same token the Galaxy Gun or Sun Crusher would also be strategic weapons, useful as part of a massive attack, and logical to a degree, but impractical on the battlefield.

The Sun Crusher was not duplicable, while the Death Star was. Furthermore, the Galaxy Gun could be traced to a fixed firing position, and it relied on gimmicks (magic chain reactions, atypically strong shields, and magic shield penetrators). Its much easier to build a shield which can defeat known penetrators, disrupt magic chain reactions through stable matter, than it is to magically dispose of 1e38 J.

THAT is what the Death Stars were useful for, terror weapons, strategic weapons. In a large scale conflict it's more likely that smaller, more agile, and most of all more economical (i.e, u can has moar) superweapons like the Eclipses, Sovereigns and Wold Devastators would come into play. They could be built in the thousands, WDs even mass producing themselves if need be, and even smaller, less powerful but more economical superlasers (like Darksaber) or things like Torpedo Spheres, Battle Planetoids and the like would be present as well.

Yes I do agree, but none of them would be able to defeat an Alderaanian shield which dissipated a 1e38 J blast for several tenths of seconds using uncoordinated fire of a much lower intensity and magnitude spread along many different vectors. A Death Star would be required. Do you have a comprehension for what intensity means? Do you understand why having a single beam matters? Why a knife can pierce kevlar that can stop a 9 mm Parabellum FMJ? I think you overrate your conceptual understanding of the real life issues and topics surrounding what underscores your opinion on this topic.

That, you see, is what would eventually happen. Death Stars and Galaxy Guns aside, in a battle against enemies of equal footing, in a real war (not against a rebellion, or uprising) they would more likely than not deploy less powerful but more practical siege engines, superweapons and super-capital ships with the intent of deploying them by the thousands and thousands. For the paltry (compared to the DS 2) price of several thousand Eclipses or Sovereigns, or even less for Darksaber clones, every fleet could have independant superweapons capable of defeating most shields and causing ELEs on any planet they're used against...which is all that is really required in war, to have sufficient power to kill your enemy for the right, most economical price. That's why WWII superguns like "the Dora", or railroad guns from WWI, were eventually rendered impractical as you could build and deploy thousands upon thousands of assualt guns and howitzers for the same price. The World Devastators are so useful in wartime the strategy just writes itself...if every fleet had a large, Silencer-7 type one or more, then they'd be effectivey self-sufficient and able to live off the land AND equipped with a tactical scale superweapon to deploy whenever needed. During an invasion of enemy territory, this would be invaluable.

Who gives a shit about a scenario which is unlikely and unexpected throughout history? The Galactic state is an ecumenical hegemon which completely dominates its physical neighborhood and has been in a state of average static equilibrium for millennia. The primary threat any planner for the military of the galactic state considers is threats to the hegemony of the state: civil war and other lesser disturbances. Your reply to me pointing out the Death Star did serve a real and militarily necessary role to the Imperial planners is to announce they should have planned for something very unlikely, and because you shifted the goalposts in your head, that makes my argument bad.

I will give you credit for the Schwerer Gustav analogy, which is roughly what I think the Death Star is equivalent to. A particularly capable and stupendous siege artillery piece, except its much more self-defensible and mobile.

*sigh* I'm babbling in the most nerdy way possible, and i just realized i'm devises strategy for whoe armies that don't exist, but you get my point. Cinematic drama is irrelevent, logically the whole thing makes sense in-universe, and with all due respect, your basically making a blatant style over substance argument.

Cinematic drama is relevant if we want to care enough about the contents to consider it worth it to discuss them at all. And apparently you're illiterate, because I appended a textual argument about the plot (un)value to the face value interpretation of the Dark Empire Sourcebook as presenting an Eclipse-class with equal strategic value to the Death Star. That was after I produced reams of suspension of disbelief, in-universe discussion of the fact that the Death Star does have a genuine value as a weapon, and that the face value interpretation of the DESB must be wrong because of reason.

[Lord Relvenous]

The Death Star makes sense, not purely because it can crack a heavy planetary shield--they could, as i mentioned, just hit the thing with a moon if need be, as they can clearly move immense masses through hyperspace and at relativistic velocities (battle planetoids, both DS models, worldships, et al). If that's the only "un-substituable" reason to have it then it sucks, again i'm not trying to be offensive but that reasoning is terribly flawed. The Death Star is a strategic weapon, nothing more, it was designed as a weapon of terror like the Tsar Bomb (canon agrees with this, as it was actually IMPERIAL POLICY at the time!) and it's usefulness in full scale war against an enemy that could bring equal power, force-on-force, would be somewhat limited...against say, hypothetically, Civilization or a more pronounced Vong invasion. It'd be impractical because of the logistics train, the need for fuel, the fact you have only one at a time, among other reasons. By that same token the Galaxy Gun or Sun Crusher would also be strategic weapons, useful as part of a massive attack, and logical to a degree, but impractical on the battlefield.

You bring this up for a second time, and I don't know why. For the Empire, there was no possibility of there ever being an enemy that could bring equal power. They didn't to plan for it. The strategic value of the DS was enough.

[18-Till-I-Die]

I didn't say Eclipse was stupid, I said it having equal capability to the much larger Death Star is stupid.

It doesnt. It has only a fraction of the capacity, as i understand it. Most likely for the reasons you mentioned. It was not even remotely as powerful as the Death Star, nor have i ever heard it called such, so unless i missed somewhere where it says otherwise (my Esscential Gude does not, IIRC) you're wrong abou this. It is NOT as powerful as the Death Star (as far as i know), it IS however far more powerful than any ISD.

No offense, but your own argument seems to be gut-feel say-so. Which is to say, your argument is worthless.

Excuse me? It hardly is, and i'd love to see you explain how this is the case. Yeah i never really was impressed with the Death Star, in terms of McGuffinhood, but that has nothing to do with my opinion. YOU on the otherhand, outright stated that you need to feel the characters were fo realz when they shit themselves over it, and Galvatron basically was saying he hated it because the Eclipse somehow "made the DS less impressive", which is not even true really.

The kinetic energy of the Alderaanian shot was much greater than that of a moon hitting the planet.

So? The Torpedo Spheres somehow can knock down shields, so obviously the Death Star is not some be-all end-all shield destroyer weapon, it's been done in-universe before...by, wait for it, PROJECTILES. Like, you know, Torpedos. The way they work is to focus all their shots at a single point, so obviously you can overload these things more easily than you think, or more likely you just tear the shield projectors out of wherever they're anchored if they're hit hard enough. Or are you suggesting they're somehow immune to these effects? That's the thing, you're saying that ONLY the Death Star can crack shields...this is impossible, because if it were true then wars would be almost impossible as people could hide behind their shields with the enemy impotently flailing at them forever. Clearly even planetary shields can be destroyed with less powerful weapons, or else the Outer Rim Siges, the attack on Coruscant and other Clone Wars battles would never have happened. Unless you posit those planets were unshielded or planetary shields are rare, in which case i really couldn't refute that since it's kind of an unknown. But bottom line is--Torpedo Spheres, they can actually do it without the Death Star.

Yes, and the energy requirements for moving these things around are comparable to those of firing the DS superlaser itself, idiot.

Which would be valid if i said otherwise. Earlier in the thread (look on the previous pages) i suggested it because, it was cheaper to build the engines than build the DS, not because it was more energy efficient. We're talking about economics here, not energy efficiency.

They could not tolerate the risk of civil war from impractically assailable member worlds capable of fielding defenses capable of forestalling conventional assault at length, giving time to effect a political challenge or summon allies to their cause.

Which is why they have Torpedo Spheres, and have for centuries before hand. And also, obviously these shields must be somewhat permiable, because again you see both the CIS and the Republic attacking what must be shielded planets (Coruscant, Munilist) during the Clone Wars, and laying siege to them. The best guess is that shields can either be penetrated locally at certain points, or can be penetrated by ships to some degree, the existence of Torpedo Spheres points to the former.

Cold War planners knew the Tsar Bomb could not be deployed in real circumstances (the bomber carrier couldn't even close its bomb-bay doors and had to be especially modified!), so you're wrong, again.

It was designed as a terror weapon, to show off to the Americans. That it disn't work is not relevent, it WAS a terror weapon and a political stunt.

So what? Its value is only judged according to the required mission and the likelihood of it being required and how badly it would be needed. Your scenarios are red herrings. Furthermore, Imperial policy was not demand obedience through the threat of force, not force itself. Without the Death Star, applications of force against Alderaan and analogues would be difficult. According to you it was already possible, and therefore the threat of force already existed. Experienced statesmen and warfighters like Bail Organa and the Alliance sympathizers and staff are not going to be magically awed and politically squashed by impractical displays of unnecessary overkill that sap strength by opportunity cost from other areas of the Imperial State; they are intimidated by novel capability and having nowhere to hide.

You know what kind of logistics that thing would need? It would have to get fuel from somewhere, crews would need to be rotated out, repairs would have to be made, raw materials transported back and forth, the thing probably had a supply train the size of a small merchant navy. In actual warfare it would be extraordinarily useless also because it can only be one place at a time, so if the enemy concentrates their forces at one point they could still probably take it. It's not invulnerable, and even if it was, it would STILL need supplies which would and could be stalled or captured along the way, making the whole thing useless as soon as it ran out of fuel or as soon as one major part broke down. Continued battle stress would make this even worse, and more so if it had to jump around constantly.

Plus you're assuming that these people never thought this was possible before. I'm sure military planners had some idea that such a thing was feasible, the fucking CIS actually probably came up with it so it was kind of on the drawing boards as far back as the Clone Wars. From a realistic standpoint the Death Star is like a stealth bomber--is it effective, yes of course, but it cant single handedly win wars because it can be overwhelmed given time. Or it's logistics can be destroyed. You're assuming a no-limits fallacy on the military effectiveness of this fucking thing, when the original was destroyed, in universe, by a fighter pilot with Force powers. That right there means that there are probably tens of thousands of people in the galaxy who could have done the job. In fact it's obvious that "experienced statesmen and warfighters" like those running the Rebellion thought that a normal fighter pilot could have done it, and probably could have if they'd had a chance at a second run, but they were crunched for time. Granted the second would have required more fleet power than the Rebellion could muster but that doesn't make it utterly invincible that only means it's very difficult to take down.

The Sun Crusher was not duplicable, while the Death Star was.

No shit, where did i say otherwise. It would still have been an effective weapon of terror, though for reasons you point out (being one of a kind) impractical as shit on the battlefield.

Furthermore, the Galaxy Gun could be traced to a fixed firing position, and it relied on gimmicks (magic chain reactions, atypically strong shields, and magic shield penetrators).

Actually the Galaxy Gun could probably pose more of a genuine threat, as it too could probably be easily reproduced, and multiple such weapons could fire off many thousands of their missiles if need be. Like nuclear missile silos. More so defensive fleets could be established for them. Also i don't know how you could track the missiles since they travel through hyperspace, they could take very roundabout routes that lead anyone trying to follow them off course, assuming the enemy even survives long enough to do so or knows what is hitting them. Would they even know that a Galaxy Gun exists, if it were kept secret enough, or more than one produced?

"Magic" chain reactions aside, it was actually a rather good idea for a long range strategic weapon, akain to modern ICBMs actually.

Its much easier to build a shield which can defeat known penetrators, disrupt magic chain reactions through stable matter, than it is to magically dispose of 1e38 J.

How do you know that? For all you know the shields can be easily taken out by the "magical chain reaction" instead of disrupting it. You're just assuming it's easier because of...what? If that's the case what practical reason for the Galaxy Gun is there, or for TORPEDO SPHERES, you know those things IN CANON designed to knock down shields? Obviously these planetary shields are not indestructible, and probably require far less power to take out than the Death Star. In fact if anything like normal ship shields, a sustained bombardment is probably sufficient, like a multi-ship Base Delta Zero for example.

Yes I do agree, but none of them would be able to defeat an Alderaanian shield which dissipated a 1e38 J blast for several tenths of seconds using uncoordinated fire of a much lower intensity and magnitude spread along many different vectors.

Maybe, maybe not, again if planetary shields are the same as ship shields but scaled up (and frankly we have no reason to assume otherwise) then a sustained bombardment of sufficient power could do it. An Eclipse's superlaser is about, if i recall, one tenth as powerful as the Death Stars. It's possible that several such weapons could wear it down over time. Indeed it's likely this is the case, what with the Outer Rim SIEGES it's likely they just, you know, laid siege to these planets. Unless these planets were unshielded, which would beg the question of how rare these shields are. I was under the impression they were fairly commonplace actually but it's possible they may be far more rare than that.

A Death Star would be required. Do you have a comprehension for what intensity means? Do you understand why having a single beam matters?

Which again brings me back to the point that you're assumintg these things are all but invincible. They can and have been taken down by less than the Death Star. Far, far less in fact. It's in the EU but that's not relevent, the fact is these shields can and have been taken down by less powerful weapons. Obviously they have weaknesses besides sheer intensity, like perhaps knocking them off their anchor points with kinetic energy, or locally disurpting them, or other such effects.

Who gives a shit about a scenario which is unlikely and unexpected throughout history? The Galactic state is an ecumenical hegemon which completely dominates its physical neighborhood and has been in a state of average static equilibrium for millennia. The primary threat any planner for the military of the galactic state considers is threats to the hegemony of the state: civil war and other lesser disturbances. Your reply to me pointing out the Death Star did serve a real and militarily necessary role to the Imperial planners is to announce they should have planned for something very unlikely, and because you shifted the goalposts in your head, that makes my argument bad.

I don't think you understand what i mean. I'm just trying to point out that there are perfectly reasonable and logical, and indeed militarily practical and perhaps necessary, reasons something like the Eclipse or WDs exist. Indeed if one goes with the theory that Palpatine was preparing the galaxy for the Vong invasion (which seems to be somewhat true, at least in the EU) then it actually does make sense to plan ahead.

I will give you credit for the Schwerer Gustav analogy, which is roughly what I think the Death Star is equivalent to. A particularly capable and stupendous siege artillery piece, except its much more self-defensible and mobile.

No argument here.

Cinematic drama is relevant if we want to care enough about the contents to consider it worth it to discuss them at all.

No, not really. I discuss the contents of neoBSG and i hate that fucking show. The fact i'm a huge Star Wars fan, has nothing to do with weather or not a weapon is effective in universe. If you want to discuss the real world, then the Death Star was nothing but a McGuffin. But really i'm not sure what you're trying to say here, so could you perhaps clarify (sans sarcasm, if at all possible, i'm genuinely unsure of what you mean in this part).

And apparently you're illiterate, because I appended a textual argument about the plot (un)value to the face value interpretation of the Dark Empire Sourcebook as presenting an Eclipse-class with equal strategic value to the Death Star. That was after I produced reams of suspension of disbelief, in-universe discussion of the fact that the Death Star does have a genuine value as a weapon, and that the face value interpretation of the DESB must be wrong because of reason.

I was partly responding to something Galvatron said earlier, actually, but also i didn't really notice what you're talking about here. If you mean earlier in the thread i may not have seen it or it may have been broken up by quotes or something. I was also responding to this:

It still robs the filmic weapon of its narrative "umph" and tries to outshine it. And it begs annoying questions like, "why are characters in the film building shit for cock-measuring alone? Is that what the suspense comes from?

[18-Till-I-Die]

The Death Star makes sense, not purely because it can crack a heavy planetary shield--they could, as i mentioned, just hit the thing with a moon if need be, as they can clearly move immense masses through hyperspace and at relativistic velocities (battle planetoids, both DS models, worldships, et al). If that's the only "un-substituable" reason to have it then it sucks, again i'm not trying to be offensive but that reasoning is terribly flawed. The Death Star is a strategic weapon, nothing more, it was designed as a weapon of terror like the Tsar Bomb (canon agrees with this, as it was actually IMPERIAL POLICY at the time!) and it's usefulness in full scale war against an enemy that could bring equal power, force-on-force, would be somewhat limited...against say, hypothetically, Civilization or a more pronounced Vong invasion. It'd be impractical because of the logistics train, the need for fuel, the fact you have only one at a time, among other reasons. By that same token the Galaxy Gun or Sun Crusher would also be strategic weapons, useful as part of a massive attack, and logical to a degree, but impractical on the battlefield.

You bring this up for a second time, and I don't know why. For the Empire, there was no possibility of there ever being an enemy that could bring equal power. They didn't to plan for it. The strategic value of the DS was enough.

Well, thats the thing, it's not even really that useful when you realize they have ways, in canon, of destroying planets and taking down shields. That's kind of my point is that the strategic value of the DS is actually quite little in practice. They have ways to down planetary shields, they have BDZs, really the Death Star amounts to a very big and impractical siege weapon of incredible power but little actual use in wartime.

And if they had to deal with something like the Vong invasion, or a genuine uprising of massive scale, it's singular nature and no doubt immense logistics train would be extremely difficult to maintain after a while.

There really is just very little reason to do it, cause they have other ways of accomplishing these things. We know they do, they said as much.

Ghetto edit: "said as much"...in the EU

Now, if you want to go movie purist, be my guest i'm not a huge fan of the EU anyway so if you REALLY want to just discount all that shit, fine. But if we include it all, or even most of it, then yeah...they can actually do it other ways.

[18-Till-I-Die]

Look, here's what i mean:

Torpedo Sphere

Unwieldy, yeah sure, but just as effective against planetary shields when used properly. Assuming a blockade, this would be fairly easy. From a military perspective it's entirely reasonable and fully capable of taking down a planetary shield. It dates back to at least the Clone Wars, and frankly it was probably even before that, as technology in Star Wars is effectively at a standstill.

So yeah, the Death Star is not really necessary to effectively, practically take out a shielded planet. Obviously this takes slightly longer but in a blockade situation (where such siege weapons are most likely used) it's not that relevent.

[Agent Sorchus]

Ah but the DS does allow one thing that most of the other siege weapons do not: Carry an army big enough to capture very nearly any conceivable planet. It would not at all surprise me that the DS2 was made so large because the army was requesting a suitable platform to assault any target.

[18-Till-I-Die]

Ah but the DS does allow one thing that most of the other siege weapons do not: Carry an army big enough to capture very nearly any conceivable planet. It would not at all surprise me that the DS2 was made so large because the army was requesting a suitable platform to assault any target.

That...is a very good point, and one i had not thought of. I guess in that respect the Death Stars would be something like an ancient Siege Tower.

But this still makes the immense logistical nightmare of the Death Star I and II no less daunting. And there are still more practical ways to down shields for a fraction of the cost, with other means. While the Death Stars were extremely powerful strategic weapons, they simply weren't practical, not for the cost or the effort when other alternatives (cheaper, easier to reproduce ones) are available.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Look, here's what i mean:

Torpedo Sphere

Unwieldy, yeah sure, but just as effective against planetary shields when used properly. Assuming a blockade, this would be fairly easy. From a military perspective it's entirely reasonable and fully capable of taking down a planetary shield. It dates back to at least the Clone Wars, and frankly it was probably even before that, as technology in Star Wars is effectively at a standstill.

So yeah, the Death Star is not really necessary to effectively, practically take out a shielded planet. Obviously this takes slightly longer but in a blockade situation (where such siege weapons are most likely used) it's not that relevent.

All you need is a double-walled shield (like Coruscant) or a theater shield to defeat this, and the back-up inner shield or theater shield can be very weak since all it needs to do is block a single surgical turbolaser blast designed to knock a weak link in the generating equipment. Its hardly as effective.

[Ghost Rider]

I think at this point I will ask one to demonstrate why the Death Star is such a phenomanal waste.

It destroyed a primary core planet in a fraction of time and material versus sending in the numbers required to field and co-ordinate an equal number of ships.

When the OP asked about the Sovvie class and up Star Destroyer/Dreadnaughts of ousting the placement of the DS, it was succiently answered. They are vulnerable to fleets and require fleets to protect. The amount of firepower to bear against a Death Star II would require much greater given the several advantages it has above any of said class type.

So it as to be asked. Can someone demonstrate with evidence the Death Star class of battlestation as a waste?

I'm just getting sick of the constant goalpost moving.

[Illuminatus Primus]

It doesnt. It has only a fraction of the capacity, as i understand it. Most likely for the reasons you mentioned. It was not even remotely as powerful as the Death Star, nor have i ever heard it called such, so unless i missed somewhere where it says otherwise (my Esscential Gude does not, IIRC) you're wrong abou this. It is NOT as powerful as the Death Star (as far as i know), it IS however far more powerful than any ISD.

Yeah, and the primary utility of the Death Star is that it fires a coherent, high-intensity unitary beam of 1e38 J, which can overwhelm the strongest defenses (still, however, capable of dissipating the beam briefly). So the Eclipse is useless for that purpose.

Excuse me? It hardly is, and i'd love to see you explain how this is the case. Yeah i never really was impressed with the Death Star, in terms of McGuffinhood, but that has nothing to do with my opinion. YOU on the otherhand, outright stated that you need to feel the characters were fo realz when they shit themselves over it, and Galvatron basically was saying he hated it because the Eclipse somehow "made the DS less impressive", which is not even true really.

The goal of suspension of disbelief should be to analyze the films such that the events and scenarios can be taken as literally and seriously as possible. As if they could occur in their own logical bubble reality. And the idea that any realistic government would build such a ludicriously overcapacity tool as the Death Star for some vague shit reasoning like "psychology lol" is absurd. This is not what drives realistic military planning, malevolent or otherwise. And if we have reason to interpret it such that we don't have to resort to that loathsome last resort of Trek rationalizing "well, the characters are just stupid or otherwise unreasonable". Implying that the enormous opportunity cost of the Death Star was merely for the threadbare purposes previously stated leaves me with no reasonable SoD conclusion other than the Imperials are Snidley Whiplashes self-consciously bumbling inefficient villains just to make a point.

So? The Torpedo Spheres somehow can knock down shields, so obviously the Death Star is not some be-all end-all shield destroyer weapon, it's been done in-universe before...by, wait for it, PROJECTILES. Like, you know, Torpedos. The way they work is to focus all their shots at a single point, so obviously you can overload these things more easily than you think, or more likely you just tear the shield projectors out of wherever they're anchored if they're hit hard enough. Or are you suggesting they're somehow immune to these effects? That's the thing, you're saying that ONLY the Death Star can crack shields...this is impossible, because if it were true then wars would be almost impossible as people could hide behind their shields with the enemy impotently flailing at them forever.

The torpedo spheres are not said to be completely effective against all shields regardless of strength, and its quite obvious that one can figure they're simply totally ineffective against even the barest double-walled shield or theater/locally-shielded shield components. The fact there are larger "torpedo platforms" than the standard torpedo sphere (Children of the Jedi), implied to be larger than an Executor-class suggests basic torpedo spheres are definitely not the end all to be all of shield defeating hardware.

Furthermore, its still possible to defeat enemies, because a shielded planet can be starved out or cut off from its economic productivity. It is just slower, more dangerous, and less guaranteed. Alderaan besieged could have called upon its sequestered defense forces, could have rallied support in the Senate, and could have encouraged civil war. Alderaanian defense make it practical for the member worlds to stage opposition to the New Order from the Senate, because the alternative to defying them is to risk a rapid escalation to civil war. The Death Star makes it completely impossible to hide anywhere, so it significantly stymies this ability in conjunction with conventional warmaking capability and the centralization of political and administrative institutions. A fully fortified world cannot communicate easily with the outside, cannot easily coordinate warmaking from its centralized position, cannot maintain control of productive industry, and if unsustainable, cannot feed or supply itself indefinitely.

Clearly even planetary shields can be destroyed with less powerful weapons, or else the Outer Rim Siges, the attack on Coruscant and other Clone Wars battles would never have happened. Unless you posit those planets were unshielded or planetary shields are rare, in which case i really couldn't refute that since it's kind of an unknown. But bottom line is--Torpedo Spheres, they can actually do it without the Death Star.

Already defeated the latter claim. Has it occurred to you that doctrinal memory for the prolonged length and cost in men, money, and materiel of the infamous Outer Rim Sieges might be one of the reasons that Imperial planners did not feel that the political goals of the Establishment could be advanced without a weapon which could break such sieges effortlessly and thus dissipate such a heavy possible cost to pursuing their political aims? Proroguing the Imperial Senate, passing decrees, ruling through viceroys, seems a lot less worth it if you could be looking at the Outer Rim Sieges all over again, except across the much more economically important and heavily populated Core Worlds. War is politics by other means.

Which would be valid if i said otherwise. Earlier in the thread (look on the previous pages) i suggested it because, it was cheaper to build the engines than build the DS, not because it was more energy efficient. We're talking about economics here, not energy efficiency.

What evidence do you have that big ass rocks which will require comparable reactors, fuel, hyperdrive, sublight drives and defenses (who wants the thing killed en route or while being built) to the Death Star (unless you're willing to grant it by fiat the same performance in maneuverability with 1% the hardware) will be cheaper than a Death Star itself? Especially because each of these suicide rocks will be fucking thrown away everytime its used! The Death Star is more heuristically economical because all the support hardware can be reused at length, not destroyed upon first use each time!

Which is why they have Torpedo Spheres, and have for centuries before hand. And also, obviously these shields must be somewhat permiable, because again you see both the CIS and the Republic attacking what must be shielded planets (Coruscant, Munilist) during the Clone Wars, and laying siege to them. The best guess is that shields can either be penetrated locally at certain points, or can be penetrated by ships to some degree, the existence of Torpedo Spheres points to the former.

Unless you have an even shitty backup shield or local shielding for "weak link" shielding hardware, in which case your one-time small gap is not an insta-kill. Like I said, there's room for capacity beneath the Death Star, but it is you who is suggesting that anything ever said to batter down any kind of shield can be used instead of the Death Star to batter down any possible shield, no matter how strong or employing any defense in depth. Shielded targets had a vulnerability profile before, the Death Star increases that vulnerability profile immensely, allowing for greater flexibility.

It was designed as a terror weapon, to show off to the Americans. That it disn't work is not relevent, it WAS a terror weapon and a political stunt.

Except dickwaving among competing hegemon like the Saturn V and the Tsar Bomb is not comparable to the Death Star's purpose against domestic opposition. Apples and oranges. Maybe you really don't get how this is not intuitive, but it isn't.

You know what kind of logistics that thing would need? It would have to get fuel from somewhere, crews would need to be rotated out, repairs would have to be made, raw materials transported back and forth, the thing probably had a supply train the size of a small merchant navy. In actual warfare it would be extraordinarily useless also because it can only be one place at a time, so if the enemy concentrates their forces at one point they could still probably take it. It's not invulnerable, and even if it was, it would STILL need supplies which would and could be stalled or captured along the way, making the whole thing useless as soon as it ran out of fuel or as soon as one major part broke down. Continued battle stress would make this even worse, and more so if it had to jump around constantly.

So what, it wasn't designed for this operational environment or to work without the support of a comprehensive military doctrine. You're complaining that a Nimitz-class cannot fight off hundreds of submarines stranded in the Pacific by itself. The Empire is HUGE man. WEG says the Death Star was slated to be placed at the regional and oversectorial echelons in general. Tarkin's was the proof-of-concept. The Death Star II was 180 times the volume of the first. This kind of stuff is available to private individual shippers; because it was Xizor who supplied the DS2 as a favor. Your grasp of the scale is just poor.

Plus you're assuming that these people never thought this was possible before. I'm sure military planners had some idea that such a thing was feasible, the fucking CIS actually probably came up with it so it was kind of on the drawing boards as far back as the Clone Wars. From a realistic standpoint the Death Star is like a stealth bomber--is it effective, yes of course, but it cant single handedly win wars because it can be overwhelmed given time. Or it's logistics can be destroyed. You're assuming a no-limits fallacy on the military effectiveness of this fucking thing, when the original was destroyed, in universe, by a fighter pilot with Force powers. That right there means that there are probably tens of thousands of people in the galaxy who could have done the job. In fact it's obvious that "experienced statesmen and warfighters" like those running the Rebellion thought that a normal fighter pilot could have done it, and probably could have if they'd had a chance at a second run, but they were crunched for time. Granted the second would have required more fleet power than the Rebellion could muster but that doesn't make it utterly invincible that only means it's very difficult to take down.

I never said it was a do-all-kill-all weapon. I'm saying it fills a previously empty strategic niche and is pretty much irreplaceable or un-substitutable for that purpose. They needed a Death Star to do what it could.

No shit, where did i say otherwise. It would still have been an effective weapon of terror, though for reasons you point out (being one of a kind) impractical as shit on the battlefield.

Yes, reasons which DO NOT APPLY TO THE DEATH STAR. You're really thick.

Actually the Galaxy Gun could probably pose more of a genuine threat, as it too could probably be easily reproduced,

No evidence provided. We KNOW the Death Star is not novel technology except for the scale and it is scaled even further up (DS2) and down (Darksaber, &c.) This is an unjustified assumption.

and multiple such weapons could fire off many thousands of their missiles if need be.

Empire's End demonstrates irrefutably that the refire rate was limited to hours. Furthermore, it misfired twice. Its reliability is pretty low, we know from the same source that it only fired a couple times. That's a very low performance rate. Meanwhile, the Death Star's fundamental technology (composite beam turbolasers) has been understood for a long time. It performed without flaw each time fired, its test bed worked, it was much better performing than the Galaxy Gun by the evidence.

Like nuclear missile silos.

Didn't you once claim that the world's nuclear arsenal could sterilize the planet? I'm afraid much of your background on this is based on Hollywood. There's actually some evidence that many (maybe 40%, according to Stuart Slade, if I remember correctly, I'll look for the link) of the ballistic missiles would fail if we ever pressed the button.

More so defensive fleets could be established for them. Also i don't know how you could track the missiles since they travel through hyperspace, they could take very roundabout routes that lead anyone trying to follow them off course,

In TESB, Vader asks that the Falcon be tracked to every possible destination based on its last known trajectory, so clearly its not intrinsically impossible. The fact remains that the Galaxy Gun's mobility is not known to be as high as the very mobile Death Star.

assuming the enemy even survives long enough to do so or knows what is hitting them.

There are at least twelve million major population centers, more than fifty-one million inhabited worlds, and at least billions of worlds with some level of industrialization. A weapon which destroys target by gimmick, misfires twice for less than every ten attempts which could only be made over the course if maybe a couple months is a very poor weapon to completely dismantle the enemy in a conventional civil war. The New Republic was already in decline from conventional warmaking when the Galaxy Gun was introduced. Its primary value was political and psychological, adding insult to injury. We don't even really know how often they could produce and fire a planet-killing shot, since they apparently used a couple killing a troopship, a space colony, and a moon. We actually don't have any direct reference for comparison with the Death Star. We don't know how often it could have effectively killed (if at all) an Alderaan-analogue.

Would they even know that a Galaxy Gun exists, if it were kept secret enough, or more than one produced?

Its not like the New Republic didn't know there was a bunch of hyperspace missiles coming out and killing their shit.

"Magic" chain reactions aside, it was actually a rather good idea for a long range strategic weapon, akain to modern ICBMs actually.

A lot of people would suggest ICBMs are a shitty weapon. And its more like a pin-point surgical kill tool with arbitrary range and response time, so not that much like an ICBM, really.

How do you know that? For all you know the shields can be easily taken out by the "magical chain reaction" instead of disrupting it. You're just assuming it's easier because of...what?

The same reasoning for why Trekkie arguments for adapting Borg ships to arbitrary energies is stupid. We know the Galaxy Gun works by workarounds to the shields and the inherent stability of matter and defends itself with deflector shields which are quite effective. Now that's obviously less effective in principle than simply pouring 1e38 J into a planet. First of all, what if you just physically put a big fucking rock in front of a Galaxy Gun projectile? The superlaser would instantly atomize the object and push on. What is the Galaxy Gun projectile going to do? Are you arguing they cannot be intercepted in principle? You are the one shaking the "no-limit" fallacies here, and assuming that any tool shown to do ANYTHING LIKE the Death Star can do EVERYTHING IT DOES EQUALLY WELL. I'm pointing out there are intrinsic and heuristically obvious drawbacks and cost-benefit exchanges associated with substituting one for another. I'm not arguing the Galaxy Gun is pointless or has no advantages.

If that's the case what practical reason for the Galaxy Gun is there, or for TORPEDO SPHERES, you know those things IN CANON designed to knock down shields? Obviously these planetary shields are not indestructible, and probably require far less power to take out than the Death Star. In fact if anything like normal ship shields, a sustained bombardment is probably sufficient, like a multi-ship Base Delta Zero for example.

A multi-ship BDZ would not kill the Alderaan shield, as the energy threshold of the Alderaan shot is at least a TRILLION TIMES GREATER than a Base Delta Zero.

Maybe, maybe not, again if planetary shields are the same as ship shields but scaled up (and frankly we have no reason to assume otherwise) then a sustained bombardment of sufficient power could do it.

Yes, a 1e38 J bombardment. God, you're such a no-numbers moron. Do you understand the difference here? You're arguing such that if I crush something with a sledgehammer, an arbitrarily high number of pokes with a toothpick will accomplish the same goal (and in the process ceding much of the strategic advantage of the Death Star, making my point). Do you understand the number 1,000,000,000,000? The relationship between a colony of a dozen protists and ALL THE CELLS IN YOUR FUCKING BODY? That's the difference in proportion here, idiot.

An Eclipse's superlaser is about, if i recall, one tenth as powerful as the Death Stars.

No, its "continent searing", which lowers its energy threshold to 1e10-1e11 megatons. The Alderaan shot was approximately 1e22 megatons, based only on the kinetic energy of the expanding debris cloud. The difference between the two is 1e11; or a hundred billion, the relationship between our Sun and ALL THE STARS IN THE ENTIRE GALAXY.

It's possible that several such weapons could wear it down over time. Indeed it's likely this is the case, what with the Outer Rim SIEGES it's likely they just, you know, laid siege to these planets.

According to your reasoning, there was no advantage to the innovation of gunpowder-powered artillery because previously sieges of castles and forts using sapping, primitive catapults, and scaling the walls could work too.

Unless these planets were unshielded, which would beg the question of how rare these shields are. I was under the impression they were fairly commonplace actually but it's possible they may be far more rare than that.

I think they are very common.

Which again brings me back to the point that you're assumintg these things are all but invincible. They can and have been taken down by less than the Death Star.

And what makes you think all planetary shields work exactly the same, and are the same strength and employ the same depth of defense? If I tell you a vehicle is armored, and weapon A (a RPG-7) can kill it (a Humvee or Stryker vehicle from the front), would you, based purely on your semantical argument, take it into battle against a First World Main Battle Tank (M1A2SEP)? Would you think that the Javelin man-portable Anti-Tank Guided Missile system would be overkill and wasteful because of the prior example with the RPG-7?

We know for a fact that different deflector shields are different. The Borelias theater shield could be battered down by the sustained bombardment of a single ISD. The Hoth theater shield was impervious to the combined firepower of all of Death Squadron (including 1 Executor-class warship, at least six ISDs, another large warship (as per the arcade game referenced on SWTC identified with one of the anonymous Star Battleships), and more (the novelisation has Vader consulting with "20 battleship commanders"). Contrariwise, the Coruscant deflector shield boasted two layers of full-intensity shield impervious to all but plot-device sabotage. However, the replacement or repaired shield was easily punched through from below by a single Executor-class starship's salvos. And then the Alderaanian shield system absorbed a 1e38 J beam for several tenths of a second without any phase transitions (an eternity for a hemisphere to absorb a coherent intense single beam containing all the energy produced by the Sun since Moses).

Far, far less in fact. It's in the EU but that's not relevent, the fact is these shields can and have been taken down by less powerful weapons. Obviously they have weaknesses besides sheer intensity, like perhaps knocking them off their anchor points with kinetic energy, or locally disurpting them, or other such effects.

See above. Your arguments are simplistic. I'm not arguing only the Death Star works for any shield. It is you who are treating "planetary shield" to be all-encompassing term regardless of performance figures or observed characteristics as if there is no variance or differences within this set. I am not. I am saying that if there is some subset of the set "planetary shield" which can only be easily defeated according to the performance characteristics of the Death Star, than it is a useful weapon. You have presented no evidence to suggest that the deflector shields that the Death Star can defeat can be arbitrarily defeated with equal performance by other methods.

I don't think you understand what i mean. I'm just trying to point out that there are perfectly reasonable and logical, and indeed militarily practical and perhaps necessary, reasons something like the Eclipse or WDs exist. Indeed if one goes with the theory that Palpatine was preparing the galaxy for the Vong invasion (which seems to be somewhat true, at least in the EU) then it actually does make sense to plan ahead.

I am not arguing they should not exist. I am arguing they do not substitute for the Death Star in important respects, and suggestions that they do or should are retarded suggestions from retarded people.

No, not really. I discuss the contents of neoBSG and i hate that fucking show. The fact i'm a huge Star Wars fan, has nothing to do with weather or not a weapon is effective in universe. If you want to discuss the real world, then the Death Star was nothing but a McGuffin. But really i'm not sure what you're trying to say here, so could you perhaps clarify (sans sarcasm, if at all possible, i'm genuinely unsure of what you mean in this part).

Okay well I do care.

It still robs the filmic weapon of its narrative "umph" and tries to outshine it. And it begs annoying questions like, "why are characters in the film building shit for cock-measuring alone? Is that what the suspense comes from?

If we care about SoD, we should prefer interpretations where we do not have the make the characters retarded or unprofessional or otherwise silly in order to make the setting make physical sense. And we don't here because the evidence implies the Death Star was a practical weapon for a particular purpose, not just a OOH SCARY BIG tool.

[Isolder74]

There is only one thing I see in this argument.


It's looking at the British light carriers(eclipse) and then looking at the US Nimitz-class carriers(Death Star) and then saying because the former can do roughly the same job(carry aircraft) that the bigger Nimitz is useless.

Now how can you possibly think that's good logic?

[18-Till-I-Die]

This is a long one, so if i missed anyone in the mean time, you'll have to excuse me. Illuminatus Primus, i'd gladly continue this at another time, maybe tomorrow, but this is the last i can say about it for right now because finishing this response was frankly exhausting. I think it took like an hour...Jesus...

Yeah, and the primary utility of the Death Star is that it fires a coherent, high-intensity unitary beam of 1e38 J, which can overwhelm the strongest defenses (still, however, capable of dissipating the beam briefly). So the Eclipse is useless for that purpose.

But that wasn't it's purpose. Nor was i saying it was, i said in a pinch i would suspect a number of Eclipses could do the same thing because they're similar in power. By the way i looked it up, the canon numbers say the Eclipse was 1/4th as powerful as the Death Star. So that's actually canon, it's not G-canon but it's definitely C-canon, so unless you have some way to refute it besides incredulity this is something you can't really deny. Considering the smaller, cheaper nature of the Eclipse (basically a big Executor) yes it, and the Sovereigns, could be produced in greater numbers than the Death Stars. Indeed you could probably make thousands for the price of one Death Star.

Now obviously there IS a place for strategic weapons like the Death Star, and if someone came up with some absurd multi-level shield (Coruscant has one, i gather) then sure such a weapon would be used. But under normal circumstances this could be more easily accomplished with a number of other, smaller weapons.

I'd also like to point out i don't think the Death Star was a waste, i think it was impractical in combat when other alternatives, smaller and more economical alternatives, could do it's job against MOST targets. Yes some, probably rare targets have multi-level shields with multiple backup theatre shields, but really if this were commonplace then we would see it far more often. In most instances when planetary shields are seen they're either local (like on Hoth) or single layer shields like the kind on Alderan that Torpedo Spheres were designed to defeat. At least as far as i know. I understand that other instances of shields exist but be realistic here for a second...obviously these uber shields that the Death Star was designed to defeat are fairly rare or else more planets would have had them during the Clone Wars, like most of the CIS worlds where the Republic invaded. Invaded...as in landed on the planets. Either they were unshielded (i find it unlikely a wealthy planet like Munilist would be) or the shields were punched down with some other weapon or weapons over time. This probably was the "siege" in Outer Rim Sieges.

The goal of suspension of disbelief should be to analyze the films such that the events and scenarios can be taken as literally and seriously as possible. As if they could occur in their own logical bubble reality. And the idea that any realistic government would build such a ludicriously overcapacity tool as the Death Star for some vague shit reasoning like "psychology lol" is absurd.

Hardly. It's clear that Palpatine genuinely believed he could rule through fear alone, from his sociopathic point of view it probably seemed like a given. More over, there WAS a strategic interest there, but not as immediate as you seem to believe. Clearly planet shields are fairly commonplace, or at least i think so and i think you agree, but the very FACT that the Clone Wars saw multiple planets, many of which were no doubt shielded (factory worlds, city planets, fortresses et al) invaded by Republic and CIS forces shows that these can be dismantled with or without the Death Star. Combined with the known fact that Palpatine honestly believed in this "rule through fear" nonsense, and that he was clearly tremendously arrogant, such things as "morale" or "courage in the face of annihilation" probably never even crossed his mind. Fuck the man built a battlemoon and named it after himself, the Eye of Palpatine. He designed whole weapon systems so that he could destroy them with a single command, never even considering this a stupid move if someone somehow subverted this kill-switch system. He was an insane, arrogant old cocksucker...it makes perfect sense.

Now of course then we're saying "Well he was crazy, he didn't get it" and that probably bothers some people but really look at ROTJ...look at it. He used himself as bait, never even considering for a moment that if ONE THING went wrong (the Rebels have more firepower than he thought, the shield fails or malfunctions, his sidekick Vader suddenly grows a pair) that he would die and the Empire would fall. This never even crossed his fucking mind. Think about Hitler here for a second, think of how arrogant and self-obsessed he was, how he expected at the end that he could "order" divisions into being as he was cracking up. Is it really that unrealistic? I mean it's actually happened before. Here, on Earth, like more than once. Indeed i would say that may in fact be the entire point of ROTJ, that his arrogance destroyed him. And frankly it destroyed him MORE THAN ONCE.

This is not what drives realistic military planning, malevolent or otherwise. And if we have reason to interpret it such that we don't have to resort to that loathsome last resort of Trek rationalizing "well, the characters are just stupid or otherwise unreasonable". Implying that the enormous opportunity cost of the Death Star was merely for the threadbare purposes previously stated leaves me with no reasonable SoD conclusion other than the Imperials are Snidley Whiplashes self-consciously bumbling inefficient villains just to make a point.

Only if you discount the thousands of other intensely arrogant, self-absorbed, sociopathic dictators that have actually existed and have done things not even close to as stupid as using themselves as bait in a trap that depended on everything going perfectly to function. And what makes you think it was stupid? As i said from his standpoint, from what he SAID was his political beliefs, the whole idea of a terror weapon is perfectly in line with his belief system. So yeah he honestly believed he could just scare people into doing what he wanted, obviously he was wrong but that doesn't change anything.

And really all of this is just to add some unnecessary tactical capacity to the Death Stars which were already immensely useful strategic weapons, even if they were not practical for battlefield deployment in a meaningful way beyond sieges. The Death Stars were powerful, they were spectacularly effective at what they were designed to do, but like any other siege weapon they were not as practical as something smaller and more agile that can be mass produced like a World Devastator or an Eclipse or Sovereign. The fact these ships EXIST is evidence that the Emperor himself saw the Death Stars as something close to untennable after a while anyway. He would never have had them built at all otherwise, as they weren't as powerful as a single Death Star in terms of sheer destructive ability. The fact they exist means he was obviously moving towards a more tactical scale of superweapon.

The torpedo spheres are not said to be completely effective against all shields regardless of strength, and its quite obvious that one can figure they're simply totally ineffective against even the barest double-walled shield or theater/locally-shielded shield components. The fact there are larger "torpedo platforms" than the standard torpedo sphere (Children of the Jedi), implied to be larger than an Executor-class suggests basic torpedo spheres are definitely not the end all to be all of shield defeating hardware.

I agree, but the fact is that i'm willing to bet that they, and other such shield buster weapons, were more practical to deploy in numbers than the Death Star. And more so again i point out that the fact that whole planets were invaded, including core worlds and extraordinarily wealthy planets like Munilist (which was a BANKING WORLD) mean that such double-walled shields are possibly rarer than normal, single layer shields. Otherwise again, why none on Munilist? They couldn't afford it? The Intergalactic Banking Clan, who are literally made of money, couldn't afford it? Who were allied with the most powerful industrial factions in the galaxy--the Techno Union, the Trade Fed, the Corporate Sector--and who had what amounted to virtually limitless money and resources? How is that possible? For that matter how many double-wall shields have we seen, compared to single layer shields?

So far all i know of is Coruscant, and it was invaded too. Now you can say "Well Palpatine shut it down" ok fair enough, but how come no one noticed it? No one. Not a single person, and no one informed the Jedi or the Army? And somehow they couldn't raise them again after the attack began? Either they can, in fact, be brought down by sustained bombardment (mayhap some kind of...siege? Like of the Outer Rim variety?) or they are extremely rare and expensive to maintain. I actually think the latter, since i can't recall any other double-sheield besides Coruscant, and again, i doubt the CIS would have not a single shielded planet amongst them despite having immense industrial and financial resources.

Furthermore, its still possible to defeat enemies, because a shielded planet can be starved out or cut off from its economic productivity. It is just slower, more dangerous, and less guaranteed.

Not really, i mean a relatively small force could probably do it. The Trade Fed blockaded a planet and they're just a corporation, obviously the Imperial Navy has vastly more resources to do so. Or they could just use automated forces, drones and droid starships, surely this is all within their capacity. And of course all of this assumes that one cannot simply knock the shields down, which seems to be untrue, what with the whole OUTER RIM SIEGES! Seriously, they invaded a planet that was way, way richer and more important than Alderaan and it's shields were either bypassed or knocked down rapidly. Unless Munilist, an important CIS capital world with huge amounts of money and industrial resources, considered extremely strategically important, was unshelded. And i doubt that.

Alderaan besieged could have called upon its sequestered defense forces, could have rallied support in the Senate, and could have encouraged civil war. Alderaanian defense make it practical for the member worlds to stage opposition to the New Order from the Senate, because the alternative to defying them is to risk a rapid escalation to civil war. The Death Star makes it completely impossible to hide anywhere, so it significantly stymies this ability in conjunction with conventional warmaking capability and the centralization of political and administrative institutions. A fully fortified world cannot communicate easily with the outside, cannot easily coordinate warmaking from its centralized position, cannot maintain control of productive industry, and if unsustainable, cannot feed or supply itself indefinitely.

Where are you gettin this about Alderaan? What defense forces, they were never confirmed to even HAVE any as far as i know, and even if they did wouldn't they have to lower the shields to get out? Like opening a fortress gate to send your army out? That'd just make it worse. The Senate was already hanging by a thread as it was, by the time of Empire Strikes Back it was dead and gone, and it's entirely likely it was little more than a rubber stamp commitee by that time anyway. More so there already WAS a civil war going on, an armed rebellion on a rather large scale, it's doubtful it could have gotten worse and even less so that the plight of some core would (one of countless billions of inhabited planets) would smark a civil war. To be honest the Empire had every right to attack them, they were aiding the open guerrila rebellion against the Emperor, they would have no claim to moral superiority and no high ground here, they're at best allied with criminals and terrorists and at worst a rouge state. The Empire was well within it's rights to retaliate, which doesn't excuse it, they're still cocksuckers for killing billions of people that way but still.

And really all of that can be done with just a fleet of ships, assuming you cant just knock the shield down...which we have evidence they can, since they invaded strategically vital CIS worlds during the Clone Wars and...the Outer Rim Sieges. You see where i'm going here? Either these planets were unshielded, which is phenomenally unlikely, or shields are not as durable as you seem to think they are. A blockade is effective at cutting them off if need be, and i seriously doubt anyone would care since the Empire controls virtually all communications, and more so even if someone did care a civil war is already raging. That's WHY they attacked Alderaan, it was a planet assisting the Rebellion, and while we know they were infact freedom fighters and the Emperor was insane, there is no reason to believe anyone else knew that. At least not on a large scale. The Empire dominated the FTL communications market, no one was going to call for help.

Already defeated the latter claim.

What do you mean exactly?

Has it occurred to you that doctrinal memory for the prolonged length and cost in men, money, and materiel of the infamous Outer Rim Sieges might be one of the reasons that Imperial planners did not feel that the political goals of the Establishment could be advanced without a weapon which could break such sieges effortlessly and thus dissipate such a heavy possible cost to pursuing their political aims?

Well since Palpatine already outright stated he believed this stuff about ruling through fear and was insane, and the Death Star really designed as a strategic weapon and a terror weapon, somehow i doubt it. Especially since the "loss of men, money and materiel" is kind of irrelevent to a civilization the size of the Empire. They have billions of worlds, they don't run out of raw materials or energy. But ok, lets say they only have a million, like the movey says...even if every world deployed ONLY one million men, it would be a trillion men. That's with a planetary force of one million, when we know single planets like Coruscant have many times that number already. Ok so lets say they have to lay siege to a hundred worlds at once...unlikely but ok. That's ten billion men per planet, not including reserves, assuming the barest minimal forces available. And that's excluding cloning technology which, using more advanced methods, would allow them to mass produce soldiers in immense, almost arbitrary numbers. But really, i could recruit a trillion men from Coruscant alone and not even put a dent in the population, considering it's something like several quintillion in all. And they have more than one such planet. AND they realistically have tens of millions of Earth-like planets. AND they have clones. AND they have droids, wich...i mean the CIS produced quintillions of them. So yeah...no.

Proroguing the Imperial Senate, passing decrees, ruling through viceroys, seems a lot less worth it if you could be looking at the Outer Rim Sieges all over again, except across the much more economically important and heavily populated Core Worlds. War is politics by other means.

What i just said...the numbers are irrelevent on this scale. They'd have fewer ships than they do armies to put in them. Even if it took a billion men to conquer a planet, they could do it easily, several times over. Assuming they want to conquer the planet at all and not just blockade it with droid ships and starve it out.

What evidence do you have that big ass rocks which will require comparable reactors, fuel, hyperdrive, sublight drives and defenses (who wants the thing killed en route or while being built)

Uh, no? Hyperdrive allows you to equip this thing far, far in your own territory and zip it out to where you need it in a few hours. No need for weapons, or even a similar reactor. Just one big enough to get a Pluto-sized planet up to, say, a goodly portion of c. Fuck you could just move it into the system on a ballistic trajectory so it would eventually hit the planet in it's own time. Either they drop the shields and try to run, and you kill them, or it hits and you kill them. More so, even if they shoot it down, so what? I cant even begin to imagine how many of these things there are in the galaxy. And if this planet is so immensely important that taking it out is a MUST then who cares. You're assuming this is some heavily armed, shielded war world...i'm talking about throwing rocks at them really hard. Fuck you could probably tow the thing with enough large ships and just move it on a collission couse with the enemy world.

to the Death Star (unless you're willing to grant it by fiat the same performance in maneuverability with 1% the hardware) will be cheaper than a Death Star itself?

Who says it needs to be the same preformance? It's just a big bullet, it's not like you have to even aim it that well, a "grazing hit" would do the job of fucking the planet up.

Especially because each of these suicide rocks will be fucking thrown away everytime its used! The Death Star is more heuristically economical because all the support hardware can be reused at length, not destroyed upon first use each time!

So what you'll run out of uninhabited planetoids somehow? I really think you misunderstand me, this is basically a hyperdrive on a big moon or something, jump it in and let it fly on it's own trajectory with maybe some assistance. The drive unit could even detatch if you really want it to, but frankly i don't think it's necessary, since hyperdrives are cheap as fuck.

Unless you have an even shitty backup shield or local shielding for "weak link" shielding hardware, in which case your one-time small gap is not an insta-kill. Like I said, there's room for capacity beneath the Death Star, but it is you who is suggesting that anything ever said to batter down any kind of shield can be used instead of the Death Star to batter down any possible shield, no matter how strong or employing any defense in depth. Shielded targets had a vulnerability profile before, the Death Star increases that vulnerability profile immensely, allowing for greater flexibility.

Thats the thing, that's not really what the Death Star's purpose was. It was clearly built to subjugate people and to be a terror weapon. It was all part of an overarching political dogma within the Empire where the leadership honestly believed this was entirely logical, now were they right? Well, maybe yeah, i mean the Rebellion wasn't getting a lot of support as far as i can gather before their major victory in ANH...which was, ironically, killing the Death Star I.

Except dickwaving among competing hegemon like the Saturn V and the Tsar Bomb is not comparable to the Death Star's purpose against domestic opposition. Apples and oranges. Maybe you really don't get how this is not intuitive, but it isn't.

Ok fine, forget the analogy then.

So what, it wasn't designed for this operational environment or to work without the support of a comprehensive military doctrine. You're complaining that a Nimitz-class cannot fight off hundreds of submarines stranded in the Pacific by itself. The Empire is HUGE man. WEG says the Death Star was slated to be placed at the regional and oversectorial echelons in general. Tarkin's was the proof-of-concept. The Death Star II was 180 times the volume of the first. This kind of stuff is available to private individual shippers; because it was Xizor who supplied the DS2 as a favor. Your grasp of the scale is just poor.

It's not about the resources, it's about the fact that supply lines are a weakness here. I'm not saying a Nimitz all by itself surrounded by hundreds of subs, i'm saying that if you use guerrila tactics you can take out the fuel ships, supply tenders and such and never have to even fight the carrier. The scale does not take away the fact that such a massive ship requires orders of magnitude more to support it than any number of smaller vessels would. Possibly a whole FLEET all on it's own, and you know what, fuck that, you're the guy who thinks that a civilization with BILLIONS of planets can be affected by the loss of "men, money and materiel" during a siege. My grasp of scale is poor, really? How about your grasp of logistics is poor dude.

I never said it was a do-all-kill-all weapon. I'm saying it fills a previously empty strategic niche and is pretty much irreplaceable or un-substitutable for that purpose. They needed a Death Star to do what it could.

Yeah and i'm saying that unless double-shields are very rare, very new, or the CIS never heard of shields then obviously the strategic element was more or less not as relevent to the people who built this thing. Again, we've seen sieges, during the Clone Wars. We KNOW they attacked strategically vital planets...either these uber planetary shields are almost unheard of (so much so that Alderaan and Munilist and half the CIS' most vital factory worlds never got them) or they're very newm or the CIS never used planetary shields, or they can be overwhelmed with time and sustained firepower. You can not escape the fact that the Clone Wars happened, the Outer Rim Sieges happened, Coruscant happened, something overwhelmed these shields OTHER than a big ass strategic weapon, or they were unshielded, or the shields on modern Coruscant are some new thing made after the war.

Yes, reasons which DO NOT APPLY TO THE DEATH STAR. You're really thick.

Then why did you bring it up, earlier, which i was responding to.

No evidence provided. We KNOW the Death Star is not novel technology except for the scale and it is scaled even further up (DS2) and down (Darksaber, &c.) This is an unjustified assumption.

Star Wars displays a rather pronounced technological stagnation. They already learned all they can about physics, their technology is basically the same it's been for generations, i'm simply "assuming" that no magical supertech just appeared out of nowhere to make the Galaxy Gun possible. You know that retarded argument that Trekkies use against the Death Star.

Empire's End demonstrates irrefutably that the refire rate was limited to hours. Furthermore, it misfired twice. Its reliability is pretty low, we know from the same source that it only fired a couple times. That's a very low performance rate. Meanwhile, the Death Star's fundamental technology (composite beam turbolasers) has been understood for a long time. It performed without flaw each time fired, its test bed worked, it was much better performing than the Galaxy Gun by the evidence.

So yeah, then you'd need to build more than one, like i suggested below...

Didn't you once claim that the world's nuclear arsenal could sterilize the planet?

Yes i did. Utterly irrelevent to the discussion, but way to bring up shit that's completely outside of the discussion at hand. What does this have to do with the Galaxy Gun or Death Star again?

In TESB, Vader asks that the Falcon be tracked to every possible destination based on its last known trajectory, so clearly its not intrinsically impossible. The fact remains that the Galaxy Gun's mobility is not known to be as high as the very mobile Death Star.

Alright you got a point there.

There are at least twelve million major population centers, more than fifty-one million inhabited worlds, and at least billions of worlds with some level of industrialization. A weapon which destroys target by gimmick, misfires twice for less than every ten attempts which could only be made over the course if maybe a couple months is a very poor weapon to completely dismantle the enemy in a conventional civil war.

Good thing too, since that's not what it would be used for. If you built enough of them, you could cause serious damage to the enemy's core worlds and have the capacity to strike against pinpoint targets without actually having to send the Death Star itself--and risk it being destroyed, intercepted or cut off.

The New Republic was already in decline from conventional warmaking when the Galaxy Gun was introduced. Its primary value was political and psychological, adding insult to injury. We don't even really know how often they could produce and fire a planet-killing shot, since they apparently used a couple killing a troopship, a space colony, and a moon. We actually don't have any direct reference for comparison with the Death Star. We don't know how often it could have effectively killed (if at all) an Alderaan-analogue.

EGTW says it could. That's C-canon, and unless you have some G-canon to refute it, the fact remains it was documented as being designed to do JUST THAT.

Its not like the New Republic didn't know there was a bunch of hyperspace missiles coming out and killing their shit.

Ok granted.

A lot of people would suggest ICBMs are a shitty weapon.

Like how?

And its more like a pin-point surgical kill tool with arbitrary range and response time, so not that much like an ICBM, really.

From a strategic standpoint, if enough could be produced--and we have no reason to assume they couldn't since it's not even as big as the SSDs of which there are thousands--then it could still be a devastating weapons system on a strategic, MAD scale.

The same reasoning for why Trekkie arguments for adapting Borg ships to arbitrary energies is stupid. We know the Galaxy Gun works by workarounds to the shields and the inherent stability of matter and defends itself with deflector shields which are quite effective. Now that's obviously less effective in principle than simply pouring 1e38 J into a planet.

Workarounds to the shields, so now they're permiable? I thought that double shields were supposed to be almost invincible. Seriously if a workaround exists then why not use it, who says it WASNT used before? Again...Outer Rim Sieges, Coruscant, Munilist, Clone Wars...why? Where the shields at? So now you're saying there is a workaround? Ok so what is it now? And don't get sarcastic and pissy, are they permiable without sheer intensity or not?

First of all, what if you just physically put a big fucking rock in front of a Galaxy Gun projectile? The superlaser would instantly atomize the object and push on. What is the Galaxy Gun projectile going to do?

Well gee, i guess the engines, weapons, navigation systems and shields it has would probably help. Yeah it has all that. The "projectiles" are basically small ships with droid brains, heavily armed and shielded in their own right. Again, C-canon.

Are you arguing they cannot be intercepted in principle? You are the one shaking the "no-limit" fallacies here, and assuming that any tool shown to do ANYTHING LIKE the Death Star can do EVERYTHING IT DOES EQUALLY WELL.

No i'm not. I'm saying that the fact the CLONES WARS EVEN HAPPENED they way they did means that obviously double-shields are either:

A--not common

B--not as powerful as you think

C--new to the galaxy

D--the CIS never used them, even on vital capital and fortress worlds

Due to technological stagnation i simply presumed it was B, but frankly the others are absurd and no other explanation exists. Somehow, someway, they managed to lay siege to a huge number of important fortified planets and capital worlds of the CIS. Somehow they managed to either get past their shields, or the planets had no shields to begin with, and if the latter then why not just Base Delta Zero the fuck out of them. Especially the droid factory worlds and fortress planets, even if capital worlds like Munilist were out of teh question. And this still doesn't explain why Couscant took a beating, since it HAS double shields and yet they seemed to do jack shit for it against...wait for it...a large fleet with sustained bombardment. Which would be a siege...which would thus put the siege in Outer Rim Sieges.

Further more, the fact that they can be intecepted doesn't mean that they will be intercepted in time. They are hyper-capable, they can maneuver, defend themselves, have shields and weapons. Can they be intecepted, yeah, but putting a rock in front of them isn't going to do it. Seriously a rock? What did you think this was like a rail gun? The things travel through hyperspace, what is a rock going to do?

I'm pointing out there are intrinsic and heuristically obvious drawbacks and cost-benefit exchanges associated with substituting one for another. I'm not arguing the Galaxy Gun is pointless or has no advantages.

And i'm not arguing the Death Star has no value or advantages. But it's just not as bad ass as it seems. It's a highly effective terror weapon, as it made the whole Rebellion shit themselves in unison like some kind of trained seals. It's a more powerful siege engine than Torpedo Spheres if you simply MUST take down a shield in short notice. No one is saying this isn't the case. But that doesn't mean it's a practical or even logical weapon, when others are available that can accomplish the same thing. And yes the same could be said about the Galaxy Gun.

A multi-ship BDZ would not kill the Alderaan shield, as the energy threshold of the Alderaan shot is at least a TRILLION TIMES GREATER than a Base Delta Zero.

Well, again, this assumes you can't wear it down by sustained bombardment. Seriously, again, Clone Wars, Munilist, Coruscant, Outer Rim Sieges...either the CIS never heard of shields, planetary shields are new, or there are ways around them. The first two are absurd, the latter would explain it perfectly.

Yes, a 1e38 J bombardment.

I'll say it again...Munilist, vital CIS planet, certainly shielded right? Ok, so how come it went down? Or are you going to argue it wasn't shielded; ok then what about the OTHER CIS worlds, and even if they're not shielded then why weren't the droid factories destroyed from orbit. Frankly i think it's absurd to think the CIS never deployed planetary shields, so either the Alderaan shield is somehow unique (unlikely), or they can be worn down with a similar amount of energy over time, or by other, smaller siege weapons. Again...shields of the kind you're describing, this invincible uber shields, make the Outer Rim Sieges and most of the Clone Wars IMPOSSIBLE or else both sides would hide behind their shields with the other unable to penetrate. Obviously these things can fail against less powerful weapons. Unless, as i said, you can figure out a way to invade a shielded planet somehow.

No, its "continent searing", which lowers its energy threshold to 1e10-1e11 megatons. The Alderaan shot was approximately 1e22 megatons, based only on the kinetic energy of the expanding debris cloud. The difference between the two is 1e11; or a hundred billion, the relationship between our Sun and ALL THE STARS IN THE ENTIRE GALAXY.

I was wrong, it's actually 1/4th as powerful. Again, this is all canon, no evidence you've shown as disputed this. Indeed i doubt any exists. So please show me higher canon evidence or some kind of evidence that it's not as powerful as the actual C-canon says, because otherwise you're incredulity is irrelevent.

According to your reasoning, there was no advantage to the innovation of gunpowder-powered artillery because previously sieges of castles and forts using sapping, primitive catapults, and scaling the walls could work too.

What the fuck are you talking about? Please explain how you came to this conclusion.

I think they are very common.

I do to, indeed i'd imagine they're actually fairly ubiquitous. Almost to the point you'd think they'd have some way to...gee i don't know, batter them down somehow. Some kind of siege weapon...

And what makes you think all planetary shields work exactly the same, and are the same strength and employ the same depth of defense? If I tell you a vehicle is armored, and weapon A (a RPG-7) can kill it (a Humvee or Stryker vehicle from the front), would you, based purely on your semantical argument, take it into battle against a First World Main Battle Tank (M1A2SEP)? Would you think that the Javelin man-portable Anti-Tank Guided Missile system would be overkill and wasteful because of the prior example with the RPG-7?

Which is all well and good except that shields aren't armor. We know they're based on power input, so unlike steel which remains in place if the vehicle's engines fail, shields drop if they're generators are overloaded.

We know for a fact that different deflector shields are different. The Borelias theater shield could be battered down by the sustained bombardment of a single ISD. The Hoth theater shield was impervious to the combined firepower of all of Death Squadron (including 1 Executor-class warship, at least six ISDs, another large warship (as per the arcade game referenced on SWTC identified with one of the anonymous Star Battleships), and more (the novelisation has Vader consulting with "20 battleship commanders").

You could probably shoot around them and melt the planet. Unless you think a Base Delta Zero would somehow be defeated by a theater shield. If the entire planet is an airless, molten husk it's really irrelevent how tough the shield is over one particular area. Unless the shield makes it's own air, somehow. And that still wouldn't stop the ground from melting to slag as the atmosphere basically boils. Really i always read this as Vader not wanting, or wanting an excuse, to not have to BDZ the planet and turn his baby boy into a handful of dust

Contrariwise, the Coruscant deflector shield boasted two layers of full-intensity shield impervious to all but plot-device sabotage. However, the replacement or repaired shield was easily punched through from below by a single Executor-class starship's salvos. And then the Alderaanian shield system absorbed a 1e38 J beam for several tenths of a second without any phase transitions (an eternity for a hemisphere to absorb a coherent intense single beam containing all the energy produced by the Sun since Moses).

Wait so an Executor shot it's way out through a "replacement shield"? Was this shield stated, in the book, to be less powerful than the original somehow?

See above. Your arguments are simplistic. I'm not arguing only the Death Star works for any shield. It is you who are treating "planetary shield" to be all-encompassing term regardless of performance figures or observed characteristics as if there is no variance or differences within this set. I am not. I am saying that if there is some subset of the set "planetary shield" which can only be easily defeated according to the performance characteristics of the Death Star, than it is a useful weapon. You have presented no evidence to suggest that the deflector shields that the Death Star can defeat can be arbitrarily defeated with equal performance by other methods.

Then where ARE these shields. How come we've seen, maybe, two in all of the canon? Where were they during the Clone Wars, you know that HUGE interstellar war where the Republic almost went under, that war? Either these shields are so small a subset as to be almost one of a kind items or relics, or there are other ways around them that you're ignoring. The only reason you're ignoring it, i have a feeling, is because you don't want to admit that the Death Star was built by quoute "mustache twirling supervillains"...even though that PRECISELY THE CASE, and even George Lucas seems to agree since his characterization of the Emperor was exactly that. The Death Star, while a powerful weapon and certainly an example of the Empire's peak power, was basically built because Palpatine is insane. Whatever these uber-shields are they're either not common enough to be relevent (assuming Alderaan counts, plus Coruscant that'd be a whopping two) and evidence seems to suggest that less powerful shields are far, far more common. Or maybe shields are quite rare over whole planets, it's a crazy thought but it would explain the Outer Rim Sieges, and Munilist and every OTHER major planetary invasion in the Clone Wars. If that's the case then you would actually have a very good argument--if shields are rare, and extremely powerful, then you would need the Death Star to punch through them.

I am not arguing they should not exist. I am arguing they do not substitute for the Death Star in important respects, and suggestions that they do or should are retarded suggestions from retarded people.

Why? Cause of what? Look, again, i have about a ton of C-canon that says either shields, as you describe them, are extremely rare or not nearly as powerful as you seem to think they are. Unless you want to remove the entire Clone Wars cartoon series, both of them, from canon, as well as most of the books, AND the part in the movie where the Outer Rim Sieges are mentioned...then something else is going on here. Now if you want to say there is some subset of shields that are uber-maxi-super powerful, fine but that subclass would be so small as to be irrelevent since you seem to be unable to think of more than two. I can think of about a dozen cases that say otherwise. Maybe more. And the movies also show the lack of a shield during the battle of Couscant, several other Clone Wars battlefields if briefly, and mentioned the Outer Rim Sieges...which would be IMPOSSIBLE if what you describe is true.

If we care about SoD, we should prefer interpretations where we do not have the make the characters retarded or unprofessional or otherwise silly in order to make the setting make physical sense. And we don't here because the evidence implies the Death Star was a practical weapon for a particular purpose, not just a OOH SCARY BIG tool.

Well like i said...Outer Rim Sieges, Munilist, Coruscant, Clone Wars...they happened. WTF Primus?

[Ender]

The Eclipse is not 1/4th the power of the DS. I have no idea the source for that absurd statement. The Eclipse has a power of ~10^28 watts, and a total fuel capacity of ~10^32 joules. Even if you allow a lot of charge up time (and I personally figure its blasts are essentially one shot BDZs on the order of 10^30 joules), it absolutely cannot match the same role as the Death Star because it doesn't have the fuel capacity or total energy. It can probably pop a theater shield without issue, maybe even a very light planetary one. But it cannot match what the DS can do. Period. End of debate.


Now a good question is why build both the Eclipse and the Sovereign, which appear to fulfill the same role.

[Stark]

I believe that statement comes from the Dark Empire sourcebook, which in one breath says it's 1/3 the power (or similar) and that it can 'sear continents'... even though 1/3 a DS blast would still punch through the shield and destroy the entire planet.

The Sovereign has always made little sense; it's just a silhouette that doesn't even really look anything like the Eclipse and lacks the prominent superlaser features (unless it's a plan view anyway).