A brief question or two regarding reactor cores?

[Commander Veers]

Some have said that two Venators can equal (if not trump) an ISD in terms of firepower, with regards only to the raw firepower as opposed to the fighter compliment or anything of the sort. The same has been said for Victory Destroyers too. I just wonder... If a (solar ionisation) reactor core is twice the size of another, does that make it twice as powerful? Or, considering the fact that reactor cores are spherical, would the change be related more closely to the increase in volume (rather than the mere radius, which would infer a much larger increase)? If this were the case, could we actually conclude that a Star destroyer could shrug off a much larger amount of Venators/victories than a pair?

In my ROTS ICS it states that a Mandator Dreadnought can equal 1,000 recusant and munificent-class CIS frigates. And yet it probably doesn't have a reactor core that's 1,000 times the diameter of those of its adversaries. So can we presume that this statement is just a hyperbole/an extremely ill-informed one? Or might it suggest that differences in reactor output are not so much dependant upon diameter as volume.

One of the main problems here is that there doesn't seem to be any comprehensive explanation as to the principle of a reactor core. Maybe within that globe there's not just a vast amount of fuel and some area for it to react but lots of little systems. Ah well, using what we've got, is there any way of answering this question?

Also, is there any lower limit to the possible size of a solar ionisation reactor that we know of? TIE fighters use a hugely scaled down l-a2b reactor akin to the hugely scaled up ISD variant. Could one then be placed into a rucksack-sized container? Surely this would mean that a hand-held or light vehicle-mounted weapon system could equal the power of a TIE's main cannons ?
Of course, this idea could be made redundant by the concept that perhaps solar ionisation reactor cores or the requisite pieces of equipment needed for one to run weigh a lot (and are therefore best suited for very powerful machines!). Or maybe hypermatter needs special shielding? I'm stabbing at the dark a lot here. It's a very understated and uncovered area of SW hence the need to ask this question !

[nightmare]

Some have said that two Venators can equal (if not trump) an ISD in terms of firepower, with regards only to the raw firepower as opposed to the fighter compliment or anything of the sort. The same has been said for Victory Destroyers too. I just wonder... If a (solar ionisation) reactor core is twice the size of another, does that make it twice as powerful? Or, considering the fact that reactor cores are spherical, would the change be related more closely to the increase in volume (rather than the mere radius, which would infer a much larger increase)? If this were the case, could we actually conclude that a Star destroyer could shrug off a much larger amount of Venators/victories than a pair?

In my ROTS ICS it states that a Mandator Dreadnought can equal 1,000 recusant and munificent-class CIS frigates. And yet it probably doesn't have a reactor core that's 1,000 times the diameter of those of its adversaries. So can we presume that this statement is just a hyperbole/an extremely ill-informed one? Or might it suggest that differences in reactor output are not so much dependant upon diameter as volume.

Based on volume.

One of the main problems here is that there doesn't seem to be any comprehensive explanation as to the principle of a reactor core. Maybe within that globe there's not just a vast amount of fuel and some area for it to react but lots of little systems. Ah well, using what we've got, is there any way of answering this question?

Also, is there any lower limit to the possible size of a solar ionisation reactor that we know of? TIE fighters use a hugely scaled down l-a2b reactor akin to the hugely scaled up ISD variant. Could one then be placed into a rucksack-sized container? Surely this would mean that a hand-held or light vehicle-mounted weapon system could equal the power of a TIE's main cannons ?
Of course, this idea could be made redundant by the concept that perhaps solar ionisation reactor cores or the requisite pieces of equipment needed for one to run weigh a lot (and are therefore best suited for very powerful machines!). Or maybe hypermatter needs special shielding? I'm stabbing at the dark a lot here. It's a very understated and uncovered area of SW hence the need to ask this question !

Heavy starfighters have the smallest HMA reactors we know. Droidekas for example uses fusion reactors, which is what makes them comparatively more powerful than other battle droids, which run on power cells. The future might hold further miniaturization, but going by the DS reactor, only a small part is actually reactor core.

[Connor MacLeod]

That assumes they use only hypermatter reactors, which of course they don't. Hypermatter offers the OMFG RAW POWER type performance that can be useful in some cases, but it carries some real drawbacks with it: volatility being one, and lack of endurance at maximum operation, because it is an insane fuel hog, and hypermatter doesn't exactly grow on trees. So it's useful for some applications, but probably not for others.

They have other power technologies they use alongside it that run a gamut of different abilities (many of which are equally magical - EG Solar ionization reactors, artificial black holes, etc.) but they also use fusion, fission, and sometimes even antimatter, with fusion being the most common alternative for most starships (and why not? It's relatively safer, its reasonably powerful for what you would need it for, and fuel would be plentiful and easily obtained.)

i actually kind of have a perverse pride in the idea SW uses fusion reactors more often than exotic stuff, simply for that reason. That and it was decried for so long that OMFG FUSION IS SO PRIMITVE COMPARED TO ANTIMATTER.