Note: this is my FIRST post on this website. Anyones comments would be appreciated but if you have nothing positive or useful to say dont say it.

And of course the Death Star can be destroyed or at least stopped with sufficient firepower. However, even another Death Star is unlikey to survive a hit by a Death Star blast (given that it can blow up shielded planets). Hitting the dish is certainly a good way of disabling it's strongest weapon, but it still carries a lot of fighters and is armed to the teeth with other weapons, while being a substantial base for enemy operations even of the superlaser is disabled.

The Eclipse's superlaser was capable of slashing through any planetary shield to crack open a planets crust and sear entire continental land-masses. And the Eclipse's superlaser has to my vast SW knowledge NEVER been fired at full power.

The problem is that the minimum energy required to destroy a planet is much less than the energy required to penetrate planetary shields given that Alderaan's shield was able to resist the Death Star's blast for a fraction of a second. If the Eclipse can penetrate planetary shields, then it can almost certainly destroy planets; it is impossible for it to be able to penetrate shields and not overcome the gravitational binding energy of a planet.

But, the key point there, the dreadnought blew through two layers of what are apprently the best shields in the galaxy. Obviously they are less effective stopping stuff going out than in but it's still an impressive feat

Just read the relevant section and there's no suggestion that this happens. It mentions twenty seconds of constant fire 'opened a hole' in the lower shield.

You may be getting confused with Star By Star, where Courscant's defences are lowered rather than let civilians ship to smash right into them.

There is also the fact that the there is a good chance the Death Star's shields are too strong for the Eclipse to penetrate, given that it is stated to only be able to sear continents which would be below the minimum energy required to penetrate planetary shields as well as presumably the Death Star's shields.

The problem is that the minimum energy required to destroy a planet is much less than the energy required to penetrate planetary shields given that Alderaan's shield was able to resist the Death Star's blast for a fraction of a second.

Actually, the [i]Lusankya[/] blasted it's way OUT of Coruscant's shields, both layers of them, after vaping a skyhook just to be evil and then trading broadsides with a Golan station.

But, the key point there, the dreadnought blew through [i]two[/] layers of what are apprently the best shields in the galaxy. Obviously they are less effective stopping stuff going out than in but it's still an impressive feat

Good point.

Although, IIRC, the book describes turbolaser fire splashing across the shields

With the prow stabbing up into the sky, the Lusankya's thrusters ignited. Searing blue plasma vaporized huge chunks of cityscape beneath the hip's aft end. The destroyer began to move forward and upward out of the column of smoke that marked its birth. A ship that boasts a crew of over a quarter of a million individuals mush have killed ten times that many lifting off.

The massive ship turned its attention on a skyhook floating off its starboard bow. Altering course slightly, the ship gave more of its turbolasers and ion cannons a chance to bear. A Super Star Destroyer possessed enough weaponry to reduce a city to rubble from an orbital assault. At point blank range, the weaponless skyhook offered the gunners a deliciously easy target.

The turbolaser batteries in the bow started firing at the skyhook as they came into range, then the broadside assault shifted to other weapons as the ship slid past. The verdant laser-bolts came so fast and so close that the whole sheets of energy seemed to pulse from the Lusankya to the skyhook. In seconds what had once been an elegant disk with an Ithorian jungle paradise at its heart became a melted demilune with a forest fire crashing into the mountain district's towers.

As the Lusankya picked up speed, the gunners shifted their aimpoints and began firing at the upper atmosphere. Their shots hit and splashed color into the lower of the two shield spheres encasing the planet. Created to stop starhip assaults from without, they proved just as powerful against an attack from within. Even so, after twenty seconds of the Lusankya's withering barrage, a hole opened in the lower shield.