How to stop the Death Star

[pendell]

So ... what if Luke had missed with the proton torpedoes? How can the Death Star be stopped?

How would YOU do it?

Boarding action?

Sabotage and infiltration?

Cut it's supply lines? Where does it get food and fuel?

Wait until it enters the Corellian system, then use Centerpoint or some similar worldwrecking superweapon to destroy it?

For the sake of this discussion, let's ignore the Force as a solution. Because, powered by plot, it's too easy. Sure, Darth Overpowered can wave his hand and destroy the Death Star with a force storm. Yes, the Force can be an I Win button. I was looking for a more technical solution.

Of course, that raises the question why, if Darth Overpowered can raise force storms to wreck fleets, why he even needs a Death Star in the first place ... or a navy.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[hamishspence]

Attack the superlaser. If the exit to one or more of the tributary beams is damaged, it may be impossible to fire the superlaser till it is repaired.


Of course, that raises the question why, if Darth Overpowered can raise force storms to wreck fleets, why he even needs a Death Star in the first place ... or a navy.

Darth Overpowered probably hadn't learned that technique until after being killed and transferring his spirit into a clone.

In Darksaber (in a flashback) we see him test the "soul-clone-transfer-technique on someone else (Bevel Lemelisk), to see if their soul can in fact be transferred at the point of death. It works. Lemelisk is not even a Force-sensitive.

He uses the technique on himself for the first time in Return of the Jedi.

At some point later on, he learns the Hyperspace Wormhole (Force storm) trick- though (despite boasting otherwise) he never completely masters full control of it.

[Tavar]

There's also hints that the Emperour is designing the fleet to fight the Vong, so even if he did have the storms of doom, they might not work on them. Not entirely sure if this is true, though.

[hamishspence]

The Vong are immune to direct powers, but indirect ones, like thrown objects,

or for that matter, thrown wormholes (which can occur naturally as well as being produced with the Force)

should work.

And, if you go by Outbound Flight, he knew about the Vong, and they were a reason, at least in part, for building the Army and the Fleet.

Going back to the Death Star- Admiral Daala in Dark Apprentice appears to believe that one Star Destroyer can ram through Coruscant's planetary shields, hit the planet, and lay it waste.

So, ramming it might work.
Also, starships in hyperspace, that intersected planets, have wrecked them- so you might not even need to come out of hyperspace if you're on the right course.

[Tirian]

But the entire point is that the Force is an I Win button. The energy of the galaxy didn't want a superweapon of this magnitude to exist, so a farmboy who hadn't been offworld since he was a week old was able to pilot a starfighter that he had never been in before and make a potshot under heavy fire with the targeting computer off and it fulfills what must have been a hastily-made and unproven hypothesis about what would happen.

As far as what would *I* do if Luke missed and the Death Star destroyed Yavin IV, there are two answers. The first is that probably all of the core worlds aside from Coruscant would go into insurrection and I would potentially have the time to build a grass-roots resistance to usurp the Empire on many of those worlds and then build a sufficiently powerful force to defeat a Death Star whose strengths aren't so great against a large fleet of heavy cruisers instead of a stationary planet. The second answer is that the vast majority of the Rebel leaders were on Yavin IV, so what I would do is to be dissolved into atoms and bump into the Millennium Falcon when Han came out of hyperspace and said "Awww, not again!"

[warty goblin]

Force the enemy to use it, because it's a very poorly conceived weapon.

Most of space is empty and extremely inhospitable. Planets really are the only things worth fighting over, so blowing them up is rather cutting off your nose to spite your face. Planets are also decidedly finite.

Also it's the sort of tactic that really pisses people off. The trick to a successful insurrection is to turn a military action into a (usually violent) political one, and the Death Star is handing you the best rallying cry the universe has ever known.

The Death Star also can't be everywhere at once, while a sufficiently well organized insurgency, given Star Wars technology, effectively can be. So organize lots of bombings, kidnappings and other insurgenty sorts of things to occur constantly and more or less simultaneously all over the place. Pay particular attention to worlds of reasonable importance to the Empire.

So what do we end up with? Either the Death Star spends all it's time running around blowing up planets because somebody stuck a thermal detonator under the planetary finance minister's hover-thingy two days ago, or it does basically nothing. If it does the former, the Empire economically cripples itself and loses lots of support. It'll effectively topple itself. If the latter, the Death Star is irrelevant, and the Empire made a laughing stock.

[hamishspence]

The first is that probably all of the core worlds aside from Coruscant would go into insurrection and I would potentially have the time to build a grass-roots resistance to usurp the Empire on many of those worlds and then build a sufficiently powerful force to defeat a Death Star whose strengths aren't so great against a large fleet of heavy cruisers instead of a stationary planet.

It "carries a firepower greater than half the starfleet" and "its defences are designed around a large-scale assault".

So, even without the superlaser blowing ships up (and a very old prototype is able to do so- so it may not require that much adjustment) it can take on a fleet.

It may also be useable as The Galaxy's Biggest Troop Transport.

So you don't need to planet-bust to get use out of it.

[Reverent-One]

So what do we end up with? Either the Death Star spends all it's time running around blowing up planets because somebody stuck a thermal detonator under the planetary finance minister's hover-thingy two days ago, or it does basically nothing. If it does the former, the Empire economically cripples itself and loses lots of support. It'll effectively topple itself. If the latter, the Death Star is irrelevant, and the Empire made a laughing stock.

Option 3 for the empire is to use the Death Star to blow up planets that are revolting as a whole, and leaving minor "There was this one dude who shot at Governor" insurgencies to more conventional forces.

[warty goblin]

Option 3 for the empire is to use the Death Star to blow up planets that are revolting as a whole, and leaving minor "There was this one dude who shot at Governor" insurgencies to more conventional forces.

In which case I still succeed at objective 1: Making people hate the Empire. Since I'm opposed to the Empire and people tend to think in black and white about this sort of thing, they will like me.

Remember the only thing you can win with overwhelming force is a war, and I'm not fighting a war

[hamishspence]

In Star Wars Infinities: A New Hope, the destruction of Yavin shortly after Alderaan does not, in fact, trigger galaxy-wide rebellion. In fact, the galaxy settles down pretty quickly.

spoilers:
The Emperor reestablishes the Senate, and bases it on the Death Star. 5 years on, it is renamed the "Justice Star".

Yoda manages to get aboard, blows up half the assembled Imperial fleet with the superlaser, and then and crashes it into Coruscant, killing the Emperor.

"Coming down to see you I am. Now."

[Mando Knight]

So, even without the superlaser blowing ships up (and a very old prototype is able to do so- so it may not require that much adjustment) it can take on a fleet.

It can annihilate ships, according to the novel Death Star, where it fires a relatively low-power shot to OHKO a Lucrehulk-class battleship/carrier used by the Rebels for an initial attack run on the thing while it was still under construction at Despayre. It then later destroyed that planet with several medium-power shots. Alderaan was the first full-power assault, which then required a massive 24-hour cycle to recharge to full power.

The problem with a boarding assault on the battle station is that it's got more troops than Coruscant, as well as at least one Sith Lord on board at almost all times.

The Death Star is the ultimate in Carrying A Big Stick, the extreme of which is the center of the Tarkin Doctrine (AKA the Doctrine of Fear). If Luke failed his shot, then almost the entire Alliance would have died at the destruction of Yavin IV. The message it sends out then is clear: "Shut up and sit down, or you will end up like the last Rebellion: decapitated with one swift stroke."

Worse, the Death Star is no longer vulnerable if Luke fails. Why? Without R2 functioning, he can't calculate any jumps to hyperspace. Han could dock with the X-wing and get the kid out of there, but that's assuming the tractor beam arrays aren't still down and they can escape before the turbolasers fire up again and annihilate the Falcon. The only people who know the weakness of the Death Star are a few engineers (one, becoming sympathetic to the Rebellion, uses the Battle of Yavin as a diversion to escape... possibly not effectively if the Death Star succeeds in killing the moon), Luke, Han, and Chewie. And R2, but he's out for now.

[Dr.Epic]

How actually effective is the Death Star? I mean, how fast can it move? It seems more like a threat to just the solar system it's in.

[Reverent-One]

In which case I still succeed at objective 1: Making people hate the Empire. Since I'm opposed to the Empire and people tend to think in black and white about this sort of thing, they will like me.

And how are you going to get the resources to actually fight the Empire? Ships and weapons aren't cheap, and without those, you'll probably be killed by the Empire's conventional forces. The Death Star would only come into the equation if you actually got the forces necessary to put up a fight, at which point propaganda would paint you as a dangerous faction trying to take over the galaxy and thus your destruction was necessary.

[Tavar]

How actually effective is the Death Star? I mean, how fast can it move? It seems more like a threat to just the solar system it's in.

It has a slow hyperdrive, but it does have a hyperdrive. So it can threaten the galaxy.

[Telonius]

A couple possible methods....

Steal the plans and build your own. The doctrine of mutually assured destruction ensures that they're never actually used after Alderaan.

Stage a series of low-scale attacks and infiltrations on the Death Star itself. The Empire will need to continually upgrade its safety protocols and security procedures, making the Death Star more unwieldy, more massive, harder to move, and therefore more costly. Skip from system to system with small, speedy stunt fighters, forcing them to pursue you. If you're lucky, they'll even build another one to supplement their military. Eventually the whole thing is just going to become economically unfeasible, bankrupting the Empire and causing other systems to join the rebellion due to higher taxes.

[hamishspence]

How actually effective is the Death Star? I mean, how fast can it move? It seems more like a threat to just the solar system it's in.

It moves all right (slower than a fast warship, but still quite fast). It has a Class III hyperdrive. It got from Despayre to Alderaan, then to Yavin IV.

The main reason I suggested the superlaser might be difficult to use on ships- is that in the splatbooks, it's the 2nd Death Star that is much better at targeting ships. The 1st Death Star might have some limitations.

Though later in the EU, in books like Death Star, they may have started to scale back on those sort or limitations.

[pendell]

Attack the superlaser. If the exit to one or more of the tributary beams is damaged, it may be impossible to fire the superlaser till it is repaired.


I like this idea; more than that, IIRC the novel Death Star, attempting to fire a sabotaged superlaser may cause the entire station to go FOOOM.



So, ramming it might work.
Also, starships in hyperspace, that intersected planets, have wrecked them- so you might not even need to come out of hyperspace if you're on the right course.


I like this idea also. You don't even need a spaceship. Get yourself a nice big chunk of nickel iron rock, put a hyperdrive engine on it, point it at the death star, and hit the switch. A collision at c-plus velocities should do terrible things if it's even possible in-universe, and IIRC it is. If one rock doesn't do it, the next five thousand will. Rocks and hyperdrive motivators are both fairly inexpensive in the SW universe.



Force the enemy to use it, because it's a very poorly conceived weapon.


As far as I can tell, the Death Star is a terror weapon in the classic sense. It's purpose is not so much to be used, as it is to make any would-be insurgents wet their pants in fear. Their entire home planets are hostages for their good behavior. The rebel leader is from Corellia? BOOM! No more corellia!

It's a variation on the 'take the family hostage to compel cooperation' theme. Notice that Alderaan was destroyed for no other reason than that Leia was from there. That is the essence of the Tarkin doctrine: If you cross the Empire, you, your family, and your home planet will all pay the price. It's to make people who would have no compunction about risking their own lives think twice about risking their family's lives as well.

I suppose the Empire calculates that it will be able to cow any would-be insurgents before it runs out of planets. Possibly that would work. Or possibly it would convince the entire galaxy to rise in revolt, on the premise that there are enough insurgents that they're all marked for death anyway, so they've got nothing to lose by fighting like cornered rats.



The problem with a boarding assault on the battle station is that it's got more troops than Coruscant, as well as at least one Sith Lord on board at almost all times.


The sith lord we ignore as per the OP. For the rest -- possibly we could get more troops on our side by reprogramming the droids on the station, stay during routine maintenance.

Also, it's a spaceship. If the defending troops are spread out all over the station, they might still be vulnerable to a concentrated assault in one area. You don't need to capture the entire station, you just need to wrest control of something like the superlaser or the hypermatter reactor long enough to blow it, the boarding team, and the station itself to kingdom come. If you can subvert the computer system a la R2, you can use blast doors etc. to seal off the defending troops, or at least make their job more difficult.

I wonder if it's possible to bollix the navigational software somehow? If you can get someone in the driver's seat to crash it into some nearby astronomical body like a gas giant or what not, that would also solve the problem.


Respectfully,

Brian P.

[hamishspence]

I like this idea also. You don't even need a spaceship. Get yourself a nice big chunk of nickel iron rock, put a hyperdrive engine on it, point it at the death star, and hit the switch. A collision at c-plus velocities should do terrible things if it's even possible in-universe, and IIRC it is. If one rock doesn't do it, the next five thousand will. Rocks and hyperdrive motivators are both fairly inexpensive in the SW universe.

Thrawn used cloaked rocks as a siege weapon- it's kind of odd he didn't try this sort of thing.

Maybe getting into hyperspace is a bit harder than just one engine with reactor (not just a motivator) but requires the whole ship to be designed right for the engine + motivator to get it up to hyperspace.

[pendell]

Steal the plans and build your own. The doctrine of mutually assured destruction ensures that they're never actually used after Alderaan.

Stage a series of low-scale attacks and infiltrations on the Death Star itself. The Empire will need to continually upgrade its safety protocols and security procedures, making the Death Star more unwieldy, more massive, harder to move, and therefore more costly. Skip from system to system with small, speedy stunt fighters, forcing them to pursue you. If you're lucky, they'll even build another one to supplement their military. Eventually the whole thing is just going to become economically unfeasible, bankrupting the Empire and causing other systems to join the rebellion due to higher taxes.


Also neat ideas. The second plays with the logistics I was thinking about: How do all those people eat, drink, fuel the ship, get power for the weapons? Put enough pressure on the supply line and the DS can't really go anywhere useful. Alternatively, they spend so much time protecting this white elephant the Empire doesn't have military resources for anything else.



Thrawn used cloaked rocks as a siege weapon- it's kind of odd he didn't try this sort of thing.



Possibly because he wanted to capture Coruscant intact, rather than simply wreck it. What Roman Emperor would burn down Rome?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Obrysii]

I like this idea also. You don't even need a spaceship. Get yourself a nice big chunk of nickel iron rock, put a hyperdrive engine on it, point it at the death star, and hit the switch. A collision at c-plus velocities should do terrible things if it's even possible in-universe, and IIRC it is. If one rock doesn't do it, the next five thousand will. Rocks and hyperdrive motivators are both fairly inexpensive in the SW universe.


Actually, the shields are so obscenely strong that it would ignore that damage.

A citation of why I say this occurs in one of the comics - the Executor has several Star Destroyers accidentally ram it at c-plus velocities (they hit it whilst either in or exiting hyperspace); the destroyers were gone with the Executor fine - just its shields taking the hit.

[Winterwind]

Regarding all the "ram it" suggestions - keep in mind that in Return of the Jedi, the Executor does ram it (after being decapitated), and it hardly leaves a scratch on it. Granted, the Executor had not been actively boosting towards it, but on the other hand, it is a super star destroyer. So ramming it may be less effective than one might think.

[pendell]

Regarding all the "ram it" suggestions - keep in mind that in Return of the Jedi, the Executor does ram it (after being decapitated), and it hardly leaves a scratch on it. Granted, the Executor had not been actively boosting towards it, but on the other hand, it is a super star destroyer. So ramming it may be less effective than one might think.

It fell on it in real space. It could not have been moving faster than terminal velocity WRT the Death Star's gravity field. That's a bit different from ramming at c-plus velocities.

KE =1/2 MV^2. Kinetic energy increases as the SQUARE of the velocity, so increasing the velocity of a projectile has a much larger impact than increasing its mass.

In the real world, ramming at .999999C would equate to an unimaginable quantity of kinetic energy. C-plus ramming is theoretically impossible real-world, but I imagine that in the SW universe it would be about the same order of magnitude.

As towards ISDs ramming the executor in hyperspace -- how do we compare and contrast that with whole planets being wrecked by hyperspace collisions? Is the SSD stronger than an entire planet? Duelling comics? I can't comment further unless I know more about the sources of both those statements. Are they both from the comics?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Da'Shain]

A couple possible methods....

Steal the plans and build your own. The doctrine of mutually assured destruction ensures that they're never actually used after Alderaan.Just to comment on this particular one, it's got two main problems.

First is actually having the economical strength to build it. The Empire was able to weather the ridiculous expense (twice! and probably at a greater order of magnitude the second time, since the second Death Star was both bigger, better designed and built far faster), but that's because the Empire controls the known galaxy and almost all its resources, and is also perfectly willing to use conscription and slave labor. Unless the hypothetical people trying to defeat the Death Star with another Death Star have access to their own galaxy's worth of resources or a gigantic, stupendous amount of credits and a massive source of labor and required tools, they're unlikely to be able to build one -- witness the Darksaber, built as just the Death Star superlaser with the fortune of one of the wealthiest crime lords in the galaxy but still nearly bankrupting and ultimately failing.

Second is that the doctrine of mutually assured destruction only applies if the Empire can't destroy your Death Star, which it can. Either with its own, or with its overwhelming fleet advantage. And the Empire is almost certainly far more willing to lose its own planets than most of its opponents will be; it has at least a million, after all.


As towards ISDs ramming the executor in hyperspace -- how do we compare and contrast that with whole planets being wrecked by hyperspace collisions? Is the SSD stronger than an entire planet? Duelling comics? I can't comment further unless I know more about the sources of both those statements. Are they both from the comics?Yes, actually, the SSD is likely stronger than an unshielded planet in terms of its ability to weather such attacks. For example, an unshielded planet can be essentially leveled by a single Star Destroyer's Base Delta Zero, which takes only an hour or two. The Executor, on the other hand, is almost certainly capable of withstanding the firepower of such a comparably small ship for longer, and additionally for most of that time period will be completely undamaged as its shields will protect its structure until they go out.

Of course, the only mention I can remember of hyperspacing ships into planets was by Admiral Daala as a possible terror tactic against the Republic, and to be honest I'd take any plan Daala had with a grain of salt. She's infamous for being largely incompetent (at least before Traviss brought her back to become president -- GOD that was stupid), and was considering using this tactic against Coruscant, which is pretty much always defended by its shield.

[hamishspence]

Actually, the shields are so obscenely strong that it would ignore that damage.

A citation of why I say this occurs in one of the comics - the Executor has several Star Destroyers accidentally ram it at c-plus velocities (they hit it whilst either in or exiting hyperspace); the destroyers were gone with the Executor fine - just its shields taking the hit.

The 1st Death star may be at least a bit smaller than the 2nd- and not as heavily shielded- own shields, rather than a planet-based projected one.

A stationary Death Star hit by a ship colliding at full speed in hyperspace with its mass shadow, might be in a bit more trouble.


As towards ISDs ramming the executor in hyperspace -- how do we compare and contrast that with whole planets being wrecked by hyperspace collisions? Is the SSD stronger than an entire planet? Duelling comics? I can't comment further unless I know more about the sources of both those statements. Are they both from the comics?


http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Quaestor
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Destruction_of_Pammant
The source was Revenge of the Sith: Incredible Cross-Sections.

[warty goblin]

And how are you going to get the resources to actually fight the Empire? Ships and weapons aren't cheap, and without those, you'll probably be killed by the Empire's conventional forces. The Death Star would only come into the equation if you actually got the forces necessary to put up a fight, at which point propaganda would paint you as a dangerous faction trying to take over the galaxy and thus your destruction was necessary.

I'm not going to fight the Empire directly. That would be stupid, and also completely unnecessary. The Empire, being an empire, needs a lot of money to operate, and thus the best way to cripple it is to cripple its financial interests.

So if I want to liberate world X, fighting the Empire into submission is between difficult and impossible since they'll always have more force available than I do. Make it unprofitable and miserable to occupy however, and they'll leave of their own accord. Thus work and tax stoppages, industrial sabotage, smallscape kidnappings and bombings if I'm feeling violent, and general insurrection are my best bet. All of my actions can be carefully targeted at the Empire, while its reprisals are likely to be very broad, thus alienating even more people and driving them towards my cause.

Obviously this assumes some reasonably high level of anti-Empire sentiment already present. Given the galaxy wide party that was thrown after the death of the Emperor however, this seems pretty likely to be already there in many cases, it just needs activating.

The entire goal here is to turn things into a political action, not a military one. I can't win the second, and the Empire is behaving in exactly the wrong way to win the first. Counter-insurgency is hard, and the right answer is seldom bigger guns.

[Obrysii]

Is the SSD stronger than an entire planet?

A shielded SSD is stronger defensively than an unshielded planet, yes.

[cdstephens]

Hijack it and crash it into Coruscant.


It fell on it in real space. It could not have been moving faster than terminal velocity WRT the Death Star's gravity field. That's a bit different from ramming at c-plus velocities.

KE =1/2 MV^2. Kinetic energy increases as the SQUARE of the velocity, so increasing the velocity of a projectile has a much larger impact than increasing its mass.

In the real world, ramming at .999999C would equate to an unimaginable quantity of kinetic energy. C-plus ramming is theoretically impossible real-world, but I imagine that in the SW universe it would be about the same order of magnitude.

As towards ISDs ramming the executor in hyperspace -- how do we compare and contrast that with whole planets being wrecked by hyperspace collisions? Is the SSD stronger than an entire planet? Duelling comics? I can't comment further unless I know more about the sources of both those statements. Are they both from the comics?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

One would also have to account for a sharp increase in mass as one gets closer to the speed of light; then, the mass becomes more important than the speed for if you go from .9C to .99999999C, your velocity doesn't change that much, but your mass does.

I think we can assume you can only go C+ speeds in hyperspace, and that's not exactly real space.




Worse, the Death Star is no longer vulnerable if Luke fails. Why? Without R2 functioning, he can't calculate any jumps to hyperspace. Han could dock with the X-wing and get the kid out of there, but that's assuming the tractor beam arrays aren't still down and they can escape before the turbolasers fire up again and annihilate the Falcon. The only people who know the weakness of the Death Star are a few engineers (one, becoming sympathetic to the Rebellion, uses the Battle of Yavin as a diversion to escape... possibly not effectively if the Death Star succeeds in killing the moon), Luke, Han, and Chewie. And R2, but he's out for now.

In Star Wars Infinities, I believe Luke makes it out alive in his X-wing.




It's a variation on the 'take the family hostage to compel cooperation' theme. Notice that Alderaan was destroyed for no other reason than that Leia was from there. That is the essence of the Tarkin doctrine: If you cross the Empire, you, your family, and your home planet will all pay the price. It's to make people who would have no compunction about risking their own lives think twice about risking their family's lives as well.


Keep in mind Bail Organa, one of the originators of the Rebel Alliance, is from there.


In which case I still succeed at objective 1: Making people hate the Empire. Since I'm opposed to the Empire and people tend to think in black and white about this sort of thing, they will like me.

Remember the only thing you can win with overwhelming force is a war, and I'm not fighting a war

People are already opposed; doesn't mean they can do anything about it except join the Rebels (which they couldn't if the Rebels all died). Imperial oppression is nothing new, though executing all the people celebrating after the Emperor died is a little harsh.

[Mordaenor]

Build my own D-star. It'd be like an old west showdown. Whoever pulls the trigger faster wins. :smallredface:

[hamishspence]

I've checked- it appears to be a Marvel Star Wars issue (Race for Survival).

Three star destroyers executed a hyperspace microjump- came out right next to the Executor, which did not "sustain significant damage" in the collision:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/The_Executor

The Executor exited hyperspace on the far side of the unstable sun first, ahead of Griff, just as the final element of the Rebel Fleet approached its hyperspace jump point. As the Executor moved around the sun, the Rebel Fleet's approach brought its ships right into the Executor's path. With still no sign of Griff, Vader ordered the Executor to open fire with all guns on the Rebel Fleet, but the Super Star Destroyer never had the chance. At that moment, Griff's three Star Destroyers suddenly emerged from hyperspace right on top of the Executor. Although the Executor's powerful shields protected the ship from sustaining any significant damage, Griff and his Star Destroyers were instantly obliterated in the collision.


A shielded SSD is stronger defensively than an unshielded planet, yes.
Maybe even a shielded one, if it's the wrong kind of shield.
This would be consistant with Daala's belief that a ISD, not in hyperspace, at maximum speed, can punch through Coruscant's shield and wreck the planet's surface.

That said, it's hull's made of "titanium-reinforced alusteel" rather than durasteel. And alusteel is used in the hull of the not very tough Y-wing. So it may not be (without shields) very durable.

[JonestheSpy]

I'm not going to fight the Empire directly. That would be stupid, and also completely unnecessary. The Empire, being an empire, needs a lot of money to operate, and thus the best way to cripple it is to cripple its financial interests.

So if I want to liberate world X, fighting the Empire into submission is between difficult and impossible since they'll always have more force available than I do. Make it unprofitable and miserable to occupy however, and they'll leave of their own accord. Thus work and tax stoppages, industrial sabotage, smallscape kidnappings and bombings if I'm feeling violent, and general insurrection are my best bet. All of my actions can be carefully targeted at the Empire, while its reprisals are likely to be very broad, thus alienating even more people and driving them towards my cause.

Obviously this assumes some reasonably high level of anti-Empire sentiment already present. Given the galaxy wide party that was thrown after the death of the Emperor however, this seems pretty likely to be already there in many cases, it just needs activating.

The entire goal here is to turn things into a political action, not a military one. I can't win the second, and the Empire is behaving in exactly the wrong way to win the first. Counter-insurgency is hard, and the right answer is seldom bigger guns.

And then the Emperor says "That planet is being really annoying. Destroy it as an example to others."

The Empire has plenty of planets to spare, you know.

[hamishspence]

Yep- even if some people might revolt, others might rethink support for the Rebels, and try and betray, capture, and deliver them.

On the Hyperspace Ram Trick- there is a counter. Interdictors with gravity well projectors, to yank the ship out of hyperspace before it hits.

Also- it may be that only big ships, like Star Battlecruisers- will do that much damage.

[pendell]

I've checked- it appears to be a Marvel Star Wars issue (Race for Survival).

Three star destroyers executed a hyperspace microjump- came out right next to the Executor, which did not "sustain significant damage" in the collision:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/The_Executor



Maybe even a shielded one, if it's the wrong kind of shield.
This would be consistant with Daala's belief that a ISD, not in hyperspace, at maximum speed, can punch through Coruscant's shield and wreck the planet's surface.

That said, it's hull's made of "titanium-reinforced alusteel" rather than durasteel. And alusteel is used in the hull of the not very tough Y-wing. So it may not be (without shields) very durable.

Is it certain that Graff's task force was in hyperspace at the time of the collision? Or had they exited hyperspace and struck at some real space velocity?



A shielded SSD is stronger defensively than an unshielded planet, yes.


According to Destroy the Earth (http://qntm.org/destroy#sec2), the Earth consists of six septillion tons of solid iron. If a ship the size of the Executor can project an energy field more powerful than that -- then as Hamishspence says, I don't see the need to build a Death Star. If the Executor has the power to generate a field that strong, it must also have the power to move a mass that size. Which means it could push a planet out of orbit, no superlaser required.

I suppose it's technically possible in-universe, but that SPROING! you just heard was my suspension of disbelief going 'no way; this is ridiculous'.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[hamishspence]

Is it certain that Graff's task force was in hyperspace at the time of the collision? Or had they exited hyperspace and struck at some real space velocity?

I'm inclined to say they weren't in hyperspace, but came out moments before collision. The scene doesn't make it clear which.

If it was like Return of the Jedi- they pop out- instantaneously slow to "normal speeds"- and then collide, this could revise the shield strength downward some. Still doesn't explain why their reactors didn't explode with enough force to wreck it though.

One cruiser ram-exploding (the Peremptory in Dark Force Rising to a Dreadnought) the Manticore in Dark Apprentice to the Startide) utterly destroyed Star Destroyers in those scenes.

[Reverent-One]

So if I want to liberate world X, fighting the Empire into submission is between difficult and impossible since they'll always have more force available than I do. Make it unprofitable and miserable to occupy however, and they'll leave of their own accord. Thus work and tax stoppages, industrial sabotage, smallscape kidnappings and bombings if I'm feeling violent, and general insurrection are my best bet. All of my actions can be carefully targeted at the Empire, while its reprisals are likely to be very broad, thus alienating even more people and driving them towards my cause.

Besides what JonesTheSpy said, assuming you're capable of doing all that without being caught by Stormtroopers and Imperial intellegence people (which is a risk that could eliminate any hypothetical rebellion before getting further), the Empire also has the option of wiping out whatever town/city/region you're wreaking havoc in before needing to even think about bringing in the Death Star. Since the Empire's capabilities in this regard are known, everyone else living the area has an incentive to catch and turn you all to protect themselves and their family. And of course, this applies to the whole population of the planet if you cause enough trouble that the Empire might bring in the Death Star. There's a lot of things that could wrong and end up with your rebellion arrested and executed.

[Da'Shain]

I'm inclined to say they weren't in hyperspace, but came out moments before collision. The scene doesn't make it clear which.I believe that hitting any sort of mass shadow is supposed to drop you out of hyperspace -- it's just that you retain close to lightspeed velocity for at least a fraction of a second or so, which was enough in that particular situation.

[hamishspence]

The Quaestor "had a hyperspace accident" before hitting the planet- maybe in that case, the safeties blew, trapping it in hyperspace- and maximizing the damage of the hit.

In Outbound Flight, the smuggler ship has a "runaway hyperdrive" trapping it there for hours- maybe if it had hit a planet in the process, something similar would have happened?

[Winterwind]

It fell on it in real space. It could not have been moving faster than terminal velocity WRT the Death Star's gravity field. That's a bit different from ramming at c-plus velocities.

KE =1/2 MV^2. Kinetic energy increases as the SQUARE of the velocity, so increasing the velocity of a projectile has a much larger impact than increasing its mass.

In the real world, ramming at .999999C would equate to an unimaginable quantity of kinetic energy. C-plus ramming is theoretically impossible real-world, but I imagine that in the SW universe it would be about the same order of magnitude. I know all that - but I wasn't aware either of these was possible in the Star Wars universe either. Hyperspace, the only thing where faster-than-light velocities are possible is, by my understanding, separate from real space, so c+ ramming is not possible when the target is in realspace - you would have to leave hyperspace to make contact, and thus would not be moving faster than light anymore. And as for velocities like 0.99c, where do you infer from that Star Wars vessels are capable of anything like that? All Star Wars vessels we ever see moving through realspace are moving very slowly, which makes perfect sense - by entering hyperspace, they can move at FTL speed and evade all the complications like needing increasingly and increasingly more energy to further accelerate, time dilation, etc., and they need their realspace drives only for a little bit of maneuvering in realspace and for the final part of the journey through planetary atmospheres and such, where velocities of the order <0.01c are perfectly sufficient. I'd be really surprised if Star Wars vessels were capable of flying much faster than, oh, say 1% of the velocity of light, nevermind 99%.

In fact, I'd argue there is a very good argument in favour of them not being able to do so, because if they had engines capable of such speeds, they would also have projectile weapons capable of even higher speeds (after all, in a projectile they can devote all their effort to making the damn thing as heavy and fast as possible, rather than having to care for shielding, life support etc.), so their regular weapons would be equally devastating as ramming ships. Their vessels can withstand their regular weapons, so either their weapons are more effective than close-to-light-velocity projectiles already, or they are just similar in effectiveness - in either case, ramming would do no good.


Oh, and as for that planet wrecking business, keep in mind that to be able to claim you "wrecked a planet" it would suffice to devastate its surface and blow the vast majority of the civilization on it to pieces. You don't have to actually destroy the planet. We modern humans can wreck the Earth just fine, but destroying it is just about as far away from our possibilities as building a second one.

[warty goblin]

Besides what JonesTheSpy said, assuming you're capable of doing all that without being caught by Stormtroopers and Imperial intellegence people (which is a risk that could eliminate any hypothetical rebellion before getting further), the Empire also has the option of wiping out whatever town/city/region you're wreaking havoc in before needing to even think about bringing in the Death Star. Since the Empire's capabilities in this regard are known, everyone else living the area has an incentive to catch and turn you all to protect themselves and their family. And of course, this applies to the whole population of the planet if you cause enough trouble that the Empire might bring in the Death Star. There's a lot of things that could wrong and end up with your rebellion arrested and executed.

This is exactly the sort of thinking that doesn't work, never has worked, and probably never will. Leveling towns to get them to hand over resistance fighters might, and I stress might, net you that particular bunch. It also pisses off everybody who lived in the town, everybody who knew anybody killed in the process, and in so doing creates a new wave of people who want to destroy the Empire. There's probably more in this second generation than in the first, so it's a net Imperial loss.

Even if the threat works and you don't have to blow up anything, you are very unlikely to get the entire resistance movement, since any competently run insurgency a fairly decentralized thing. You also just made it perfectly clear that you don't give a rat's ass about the population, and handed very good propaganda ammunition to your enemies. That'll net more recruits as well.

Any way you cut it, threatening mass reprisals does not work. There is abundant historical evidence of this dating back at least a hundred years.

And in terms of actual strategy, it's a damn sight better than what the Rebellion actually did do. That wasn't so much a master plan as repeatedly getting really, really lucky. Relying on that is terrible from both a tactical and strategic point of view.

[Mando Knight]

All of you proposing you get your own Death Star and use the MAD doctrine to force it to stand down... how? The Rebellion by the time of Endor had barely enough supplies to pull together a handful of Star Destroyer-sized battle ships. No one had the resources or time to build an anti-Executor, much less a Rebel-owned Death Star. All three weapons consumed a significant amount of the Empire's resources, with millions of workers required to build each one.

Hamish: the Quaestor was a Star Dreadnought, thousands of times larger than any mere smuggler's ship. Not just the mass shadow, but also the main reactor was much larger. Considering that the entire battlestation is armored beyond nearly anything else, ramming it might put it out of commission for a moment, but the only thing I can guarantee is that the guys running the mission will all be dead.

[Reverent-One]

This is exactly the sort of thinking that doesn't work, never has worked, and probably never will. Leveling towns to get them to hand over resistance fighters might, and I stress might, net you that particular bunch. It also pisses off everybody who lived in the town, everybody who knew anybody killed in the process, and in so doing creates a new wave of people who want to destroy the Empire. There's probably more in this second generation than in the first, so it's a net Imperial loss.

And all these pissed off people know that the same could happen to them if they rebel. Doesn't matter how much they hate the Empire if they don't think there's a chance of acutally doing anything.


Even if the threat works and you don't have to blow up anything, you are very unlikely to get the entire resistance movement, since any competently run insurgency a fairly decentralized thing. You also just made it perfectly clear that you don't give a rat's ass about the population, and handed very good propaganda ammunition to your enemies. That'll net more recruits as well.

How much of the resistence gets caught depends on who turns traitor to it. And getting more of the common man on your side isn't going to do a whole lot against a army of stromtroopers, fighters, bombers, and ground vehicles.


Any way you cut it, threatening mass reprisals does not work. There is abundant historical evidence of this dating back at least a hundred years.

No mass reprisal of history has had the scale of the sort possible to the Empire.


And in terms of actual strategy, it's a damn sight better than what the Rebellion actually did do. That wasn't so much a master plan as repeatedly getting really, really lucky. Relying on that is terrible from both a tactical and strategic point of view.

You're hoping to get lucky too, and not get caught, betrayed, or blown up.

[hamishspence]

Hamish: the Quaestor was a Star Dreadnought, thousands of times larger than any mere smuggler's ship. Not just the mass shadow, but also the main reactor was much larger. Considering that the entire battlestation is armored beyond nearly anything else, ramming it might put it out of commission for a moment, but the only thing I can guarantee is that the guys running the mission will all be dead.

Star Battlecruiser, not Star Dreadnaught. The point I was making, is that hyperspace accidents causing a ship to not come out of hyperspace the normal manner, can happen.

Replicating a "hyperspace accident" on purpose, of a magnitude capable of wrecking a planet- might be able to wreck the Death Star the same way.

But as you say- it would cost them a big ship. They have big ships- but not many. They lost a Lucrehulk on the attack in the novel immediately before the Death Star was complete- that kind of ship, or bigger, would be needed.

[Mando Knight]

But as you say- it would cost them a big ship. They have big ships- but not many. They lost a Lucrehulk on the attack in the novel immediately before the Death Star was complete- that kind of ship, or bigger, would be needed.

And then, in the end, what would have been the difference? The Empire could either rebuild the old Death Star (if it wasn't completely cored like Luke's torpedo shot did), or just build another one. So long as Palpatine is holding the Empire together, it won't die. The reason the Battle of Endor succeeded was not because the Second Death Star was destroyed, it was because two superweapons and many of the best leaders of the Empire were destroyed in one day.

Empire loses a superweapon? They just build a new one. Rebels lose a battleship? They need to get their best operatives together in order to steal a new one... and every time they destroy a cruiser not owned by the Empire, they cut down on the total number of such capital ships. Not good.

[JonestheSpy]

This is exactly the sort of thinking that doesn't work, never has worked, and probably never will.

See, this is the problem - you're trying to apply real-world precedent to a fantasy situation that has no analogue to actual warfare and history.

The Empire clearly has no qualms about destroying planets to keep the others in line. There is just no real-world precedent for that. And its pretty obvious that the Emperor would rather rule 450 planets that are too terrified to resist in any way than 500 that are rebellious.

[warty goblin]

And all these pissed off people know that the same could happen to them if they rebel. Doesn't matter how much they hate the Empire if they don't think there's a chance of acutally doing anything.


You seem to be thinking in terms of blowing the Empire up. That's not the method used, and everybody involved in, or who has studied insurgencies should know that's not the goal.


How much of the resistence gets caught depends on who turns traitor to it. And getting more of the common man on your side isn't going to do a whole lot against a army of stromtroopers, fighters, bombers, and ground vehicles.

Consider Algeria in the nineteen sixties. The French counter-insurgency was able, over months of effort, eliminate most of the FNL leadership. A few years later they were forced out by popular uprisings. Consider Russia under German control in the nineteen forties, extensive reprisals, massacres and village torchings only fueled the partisan bands. Consider Vietnam, the United States won every single battle of note, but lost the war because they lost the population.



No mass reprisal of history has had the scale of the sort possible to the Empire.
Doesn't matter. Being able to kill people does not defeat an insurgency with any significant amount of popularity, and never has. Blowing up a planet isn't any more threatening to me than soldiers coming to my house and murdering my entire family, or my city being leveled by bombings. I'm still dead, and in most cases so is everybody I know. Neither of these techniques has proved effective in breaking the will of a population, it's extremely illogical to assume that the answer is more firepower.

You have to undermine the insurgent's support in the population. You cannot do this by threatening to kill people, because all that does is make you look like a monster and the insurgent the hero. The solution is to make yourself more popular, not less.



You're hoping to get lucky too, and not get caught, betrayed, or blown up.
No, I present a cohesive strategy with basis in history. Success is not guaranteed, but it is a reasonable course of action that plays to my strengths and my enemy's weaknesses. The Rebellion is fighting entirely on the Empire's terms, and only can hope to win through dumb luck. The first is intelligent, the second as stupid as a four year old picking a fight with an adult.

[pendell]

I know all that - but I wasn't aware either of these was possible in the Star Wars universe either. Hyperspace, the only thing where faster-than-light velocities are possible is, by my understanding, separate from real space,


Right here is where I disagree with you, based on dialog in A New Hope ...

Luke: Why don't you outrun them, I thought you said this thing was fast?
Han: Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops boy, without precise calculations you could fly through a star or through a meteor shower and that would end your trip right quick.


I could be mis-reading this, but it seems to imply that ships in hyperspace are nonetheless capable of interacting with realspace objects between hyperspace insertion and departure -- with catastrophic results for the hyperspace ship. No comment is made as to what might happen to the realspace object, but I'll wager it isn't good.

This is why, as I understand it, Star Wars relies so heavily on well-charted routes such as the Hydian Way or the Corellian run, resulting in a static galaxy. Mapping a region of space to such an extent that a normal ship can transit it with a commercial hyperdrive and navigation computer is an expensive process, and appears to be mostly discontinued in the time of Star Wars.

Hyperspace travel off these lanes is dangerous.

That's also why, as I understand it, the Battle of Coruscant in EP. III came as a surprise. The Separatist had a charted path that the Republic was unaware of , allowing them to bypass the Republic fleets guarding the Hydian way et al and appear seemingly from nowhere in the Coruscant system.

And all of this EU and non-EU material exists because a ship traveling in hyperspace can impact realspace objects in transit.

ETA: Wookiepedia (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hyperspace) agrees that it is possible for vessels in hyperspace to collide with realspace objects, although this typically doesn't happen because hyperdrives have a failsafe built in which SCRAMS them in the event of entering a realspace mass shadow. It can still result in a ship being dropped into an untenable situation, so it's still hazardous.

In a military situation, I see no reason not to remove the safety interlocks and go for a full collision, especially if the vehicle in question is unmanned, following a pre-programmed collision course.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Reverent-One]

You seem to be thinking in terms of blowing the Empire up. That's not the method used, and everybody involved in, or who has studied insurgencies should know that's not the goal.


Consider Algeria in the nineteen sixties. The French counter-insurgency was able, over months of effort, eliminate most of the FNL leadership. A few years later they were forced out by popular uprisings. Consider Russia under German control in the nineteen forties, extensive reprisals, massacres and village torchings only fueled the partisan bands. Consider Vietnam, the United States won every single battle of note, but lost the war because they lost the population.


Doesn't matter. Being able to kill people does not defeat an insurgency with any significant amount of popularity, and never has. Blowing up a planet isn't any more threatening to me than soldiers coming to my house and murdering my entire family, or my city being leveled by bombings. I'm still dead, and in most cases so is everybody I know. Neither of these techniques has proved effective in breaking the will of a population, it's extremely illogical to assume that the answer is more firepower.

You have to undermine the insurgent's support in the population. You cannot do this by threatening to kill people, because all that does is make you look like a monster and the insurgent the hero. The solution is to make yourself more popular, not less.


No, I present a cohesive strategy with basis in history. Success is not guaranteed, but it is a reasonable course of action that plays to my strengths and my enemy's weaknesses. The Rebellion is fighting entirely on the Empire's terms, and only can hope to win through dumb luck. The first is intelligent, the second as stupid as a four year old picking a fight with an adult.

Tell that to Toprawa (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Toprawa). The empire bombed it's cities, reduced them to the point where they have to come crawling on their bellies to the stormtroopers in order to get food. And yet, they don't rebel, because if they did they would all die. In all your examples, the people could still fight against their enemy, maybe not win militarily, but at least inflict enough damage to make them retreat. That is not possible against the Empire. That is a key difference. The closest historical example is the end of WWII, in which overwhelming firepower DID end the conflict. If you were right, it should have done the complete opposite.

[Winterwind]

Right here is where I disagree with you, based on dialog in A New Hope ...

Luke: Why don't you outrun them, I thought you said this thing was fast?
Han: Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops boy, without precise calculations you could fly through a star or through a meteor shower and that would end your trip right quick. ...okay, point 100% conceded.

The only problem is that, with our current physics, if something was to move faster than light, its energy would become negative, with the absolute value decreasing the faster it got. It's mass would become imaginary. And it would move backwards through time. How are we supposed to estimate what happens when something like that would collide with something? Granted, judging by Han's comment, we can conclude it probably wouldn't be exactly healthy for that something either (within the rules of the Star Wars universe), but as for the exact effects... :smallwink:

[WeLoveFireballs]

How do you destroy something the size of a small planet? With small Planet destroyers!
2 Miniature deathstars would plough through it in one shot each and the death star does not stand a chance since the ginorma-laser only fires on one at a time!

Ok so it may not be practical for a rebel group of several thousand to make these.......BUT IT WOULD STILL BE AWESOME!

[hamishspence]

Ironically, that's what the Empire did after the first Death Star was destroyed:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Conqueror_(superlaser)

The Rebels planted detonators, blowing it up.

[Holocron Coder]

Here a few rules of hyperspace, relevant to the discussion, gleaned from reading over 125 star wars novels in my time.

1: Hyperspace is FTL travel in an alternate dimension touched on by the "real" dimension.
2: Non-hyperspace travel is called "lightspeed" but is noticeably less.
3: Hyperspace travel off of the lanes is dangerous, but not impossible. It's like driving offroad blind.
4: Sufficiently massive (in the sense of mass, not size) create "mass shadows" in hyperspace.
5: Impacting a mass shadow in hyperspace has the expected effect on the hyperspace object impacting something at >c speeds (splat)
6: However, the object creating that same mass shadow is unaffected.
7: Hyperspace computers have failsafes that pull ships from hyperspace when a mass shadow is detected along the path of the ship's trajectory through hyperspace.

Feel free to ask for clarifications. I don't have examples, due to the large number of things I've read... but I know all of these things are the accepted canon.
To cut off arguments against 6: I don't remember the exact instance, but there is definite mention in a book of a ship with a disabled computer hitting a planet's mass shadow in hyperspace. The planet was described as undamaged, including all populace.

[hamishspence]

6: However, the object creating that same mass shadow is unaffected.
7: Hyperspace computers have failsafes that pull ships from hyperspace when a mass shadow is detected along the path of the ship's trajectory through hyperspace.

Feel free to ask for clarifications. I don't have examples, due to the large number of things I've read... but I know all of these things are the accepted canon.
To cut off arguments against 6: I don't remember the exact instance, but there is definite mention in a book of a ship with a disabled computer hitting a planet's mass shadow in hyperspace. The planet was described as undamaged, including all populace.

might be very dependant on the size of the ship. Or on the nature of the hyperspace accident.

[pendell]

Here a few rules of hyperspace, relevant to the discussion, gleaned from reading over 125 star wars novels in my time.

1: Hyperspace is FTL travel in an alternate dimension touched on by the "real" dimension.
2: Non-hyperspace travel is called "lightspeed" but is noticeably less.
3: Hyperspace travel off of the lanes is dangerous, but not impossible. It's like driving offroad blind.
4: Sufficiently massive (in the sense of mass, not size) create "mass shadows" in hyperspace.
5: Impacting a mass shadow in hyperspace has the expected effect on the hyperspace object impacting something at >c speeds (splat)
6: However, the object creating that same mass shadow is unaffected.
7: Hyperspace computers have failsafes that pull ships from hyperspace when a mass shadow is detected along the path of the ship's trajectory through hyperspace.

Feel free to ask for clarifications. I don't have examples, due to the large number of things I've read... but I know all of these things are the accepted canon.
To cut off arguments against 6: I don't remember the exact instance, but there is definite mention in a book of a ship with a disabled computer hitting a planet's mass shadow in hyperspace. The planet was described as undamaged, including all populace.


I have a question. How do you conclude #6 - -the realspace object is unaffected? In the wookiepedia article on hyperspace I quoted earlier, it spoke of a shielded realspace planet being destroyed by a hyperspace collision.


Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Holocron Coder]

I have a question. How do you conclude #6 - -the realspace object is unaffected? In the wookiepedia article on hyperspace I quoted earlier, it spoke of a shielded realspace planet being destroyed by a hyperspace collision.


Respectfully,

Brian P.

That's true, and the first example I've seen of it. One could debate that the hyperspace motivator was destroyed first during impact, shifting the object to realspace nearly in the planet, causing all sorts of "fun."

Otherwise, I have no explanation for this, since it's actually a rather common tactic to disable someone's hyperspace failsafe, opening up the potential for planets to be destroyed on a near-daily basis...

[hamishspence]

I have a question. How do you conclude #6 - -the realspace object is unaffected? In the wookiepedia article on hyperspace I quoted earlier, it spoke of a shielded realspace planet being destroyed by a hyperspace collision.

Pammant was shielded when the Quaestor hit it?

I wondered if the other planet, that took no damage, was shielded (and the ship fairly small anyway) but Pammant wasn't.

Though it would make little sense for a planet that valuable (even if its shipyards are based underground) to be unshielded.

Alternatively, each ship had a different kind of hyperspace accident.

[Irbis]

Most of space is empty and extremely inhospitable. Planets really are the only things worth fighting over, so blowing them up is rather cutting off your nose to spite your face. Planets are also decidedly finite.

Except, superlaser was precise enough to vaporize country-sized target, a city, or even a particular quarter. No one needs to kill the whole planet.


The Death Star also can't be everywhere at once, while a sufficiently well organized insurgency, given Star Wars technology, effectively can be. So organize lots of bombings, kidnappings and other insurgenty sorts of things to occur constantly and more or less simultaneously all over the place. Pay particular attention to worlds of reasonable importance to the Empire.

You mean, the loyal ones? Where populace will turn you in in an eyeblink? :smallconfused: How it is supposed to work?

Also: Palpatine does not care about uprisings. At all. Half of the planets are simmering? Oh, fine, rob them and py the ones that are loyal, depriving the first half from the means of resistance. Eventually, the robbed ones will crawl begging to be rebuilt as well, pleading loyalty. If not, the population will be killed, and replaced by a colony from loyal system. In the meantime, galaxy full or anger, pain, hatred, etc. is full of dark side, making Palpy even more powerful. Why should he care?


Stage a series of low-scale attacks and infiltrations on the Death Star itself. The Empire will need to continually upgrade its safety protocols and security procedures, making the Death Star more unwieldy, more massive, harder to move, and therefore more costly.

Like Empire can't find 5 million completely loyal beings to staff it. Or, hell, like someone with Battle Meditation can't control their guts anyway.


Skip from system to system with small, speedy stunt fighters, forcing them to pursue you.

On infinite fuel? :smallconfused:

Plus, given how big threat they are, all that will be sent in pursuit will be a few patrol corvettes, not DS.


It moves all right (slower than a fast warship, but still quite fast). It has a Class III hyperdrive. It got from Despayre to Alderaan, then to Yavin IV.

Death Star novel declares it as fast as any ship, giving it Class 1, perhaps.


The main reason I suggested the superlaser might be difficult to use on ships- is that in the splatbooks, it's the 2nd Death Star that is much better at targeting ships. The 1st Death Star might have some limitations.

It's better in the sense it can fire significantly off-bore, as demonstrated in RotJ. DS I can only fire in a narrow cone, but it can target any ship larger than MFalcon.


As towards ISDs ramming the executor in hyperspace -- how do we compare and contrast that with whole planets being wrecked by hyperspace collisions? Is the SSD stronger than an entire planet?

Daala, IIRC, planned to jump to the planet in question before they have a chance to raise shields, then hurry ISD through them before they would be raised. And, damage from ship itself would be "relatively" minor - only country-sized are destroyed. The real damage was supposed to come from earthquakes from shaken tectonic plates, and the fact Coruscant was full of towers that would collapse. As DS has the shields on the whole time, has no towers or tectonic plates, and unlike a planet has 5 km thick crust of nothing but armour and air cushions, well...


I'm not going to fight the Empire directly. That would be stupid, and also completely unnecessary. The Empire, being an empire, needs a lot of money to operate, and thus the best way to cripple it is to cripple its financial interests.

Keep half of the planets loyal (which they were), rob anyone who isn't loyal, taking any sensitive industries from them, give them to loyal planets. There, problem solved, the rest can go rot.


Make it unprofitable and miserable to occupy however, and they'll leave of their own accord. Thus work and tax stoppages, industrial sabotage, smallscape kidnappings and bombings if I'm feeling violent, and general insurrection are my best bet.

Who said they need to occupy? An ISD parked over the planet can control all traffic above it, then you send an ultimatum: provide us with 50 million tons of ore every year, or we'll start blasting a city every 24 hours. There, now uprisings are the problem of local governor, rebels are instantly executed by local law agencies who know the land as well as they do, who have a big interest in not letting their city be bombarded as unproductive.

Even most rebellious planet will capitulate then, and if not, hell, that's why we have DS. Next one will think twice.


That said, it's hull's made of "titanium-reinforced alusteel" rather than durasteel. And alusteel is used in the hull of the not very tough Y-wing. So it may not be (without shields) very durable.

Um, in both X-Wing and TIE Fighter Y-wings were among the toughest ships. In all RPGs, too.


Is it certain that Graff's task force was in hyperspace at the time of the collision? Or had they exited hyperspace and struck at some real space velocity?

The 'lines' stopped just above Executor, on shield level. If they exited realspace, it was only to be vaporised by shields.


According to Destroy the Earth (http://qntm.org/destroy#sec2), the Earth consists of six septillion tons of solid iron. If a ship the size of the Executor can project an energy field more powerful than that -- then as Hamishspence says, I don't see the need to build a Death Star. If the Executor has the power to generate a field that strong, it must also have the power to move a mass that size. Which means it could push a planet out of orbit, no superlaser required.

Physics does not work that way! :smallsigh:

You're saying that if concrete bunker (which weights 30 tons) can withstand a nuclear explosion capable of destroying 20.000 tons of paper, then it has to weight 20.000 tons, instead of 30? Huh? And a military crane capable of lifting that bunker can lift 20.000 tons? And it can throw cities around, which means we need no silly tanks?


All Star Wars vessels we ever see moving through realspace are moving very slowly, which makes perfect sense

You mean thousands of kilometres per hour? Dozens of kilometers per second? Yes, that is slow :smalltongue:


where velocities of the order <0.01c are perfectly sufficient. I'd be really surprised if Star Wars vessels were capable of flying much faster than, oh, say 1% of the velocity of light, nevermind 99%.

:smallsigh:

Space has no air in it. There is no 'maximum velocity' in space :smallsigh:

And yes, SW ships easily reach .90 C, in both novels and films. How do you think Han Solo got to Bespin without hyperdrive on limited supplies giving Luke time to train with Yoda? Time dilation, that's how.


In fact, I'd argue there is a very good argument in favour of them not being able to do so, because if they had engines capable of such speeds, they would also have projectile weapons capable of even higher speeds (after all, in a projectile they can devote all their effort to making the damn thing as heavy and fast as possible, rather than having to care for shielding, life support etc.), so their regular weapons would be equally devastating as ramming ships.

Um... the term you're looking for is 'acceleration'. And, said projectiles would be useless, anyway, due to strength of SW shields and space they'd need to deploy themselves.


Their vessels can withstand their regular weapons, so either their weapons are more effective than close-to-light-velocity projectiles already

Ayup. At least the size their guns could propel.


Any way you cut it, threatening mass reprisals does not work. There is abundant historical evidence of this dating back at least a hundred years.

Wrong. It works. There are thousands of examples. Hell, three are from XXI century alone. You just need to apply force correctly.


Han: Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops boy, without precise calculations you could fly through a star or through a meteor shower and that would end your trip right quick.

In the movie:


Traveling through hyperspace isn't
like dusting crops, boy! Without
precise calculations we could fly
right through a star or bounce too
close to a supernova and that'd end
your trip real quick, wouldn't it?

Not meteors, supernova. This example does not suggest that anything bad would happen to the object in question, though it probably would. I just haven't seen even one example of anything in hyperspace ramming other things in the whole of EU, even if that would not be forcibly pulled out of hyperspace by the planet's/DS own gravitational field (and in some cases, it seems evading that effect is impossible, breakers or no, you'll be pulled out by strong enough field).


This is why, as I understand it, Star Wars relies so heavily on well-charted routes such as the Hydian Way or the Corellian run, resulting in a static galaxy. Mapping a region of space to such an extent that a normal ship can transit it with a commercial hyperdrive and navigation computer is an expensive process, and appears to be mostly discontinued in the time of Star Wars.

Only for civilian traffic, and only because Empire started to regulate navcomputers. You can see Executor's task force mapping thousands of new lanes/star systems in the beginning of the ESB movie.


Hyperspace travel off these lanes is dangerous.

Only a bit slower, to give engines enough time to power off in case of problems.


That's also why, as I understand it, the Battle of Coruscant in EP. III came as a surprise.

I thought is was more of a surprise of Sep's finally committing their reserve that was so carefully held back until now on a target that didn't gave them any advantage.


In a military situation, I see no reason not to remove the safety interlocks and go for a full collision, especially if the vehicle in question is unmanned, following a pre-programmed collision course.

Except it is never done, and for a good reason, too, probably. No one escapes Interdictors by switching off safeties, no planets are ever destroyed in equipment failures (just think how many ships arrives daily at Coruscant), no one ever uses that tactic. Maybe hyperspace is just too dense in the gravity well to travel safely?

[Yora]

There's also hints that the Emperour is designing the fleet to fight the Vong, so even if he did have the storms of doom, they might not work on them. Not entirely sure if this is true, though.

And, if you go by Outbound Flight, he knew about the Vong, and they were a reason, at least in part, for building the Army and the Fleet.
It's things like these that had me stop reading new star wars novels and comics 10 years ago.

If only half of such things are true, nothing that happened in the movies was actually happening. Everything we've seen was some kind of ancient conspirancy, super-force-wizard, or stormtrooper-underwear-designer playing an elaborate ruse to fool the viewers into believing that it's a different universe than a Star Trek/Dragonlance crossover.

[hamishspence]

Death Star novel declares it as fast as any ship, giving it Class 1, perhaps.


Page 14 of Death Star:


Well, almost invulnerable. Lemelisk had disappointed him in that instance. The greatest challenge in designing that battle station, he had said, was not creating a beam cannon big enough to destroy a planet, nor was it building a moon-sized station that would be driven by a Class Three hyperdrive. The greatest challenge was powering both of them. There must be trade-offs, he had said.

In order to mount a weapon of mundicidal means, shielding capabilities would have to be downgraded to a rudimentary level. Power, Bevel had said, was not infinite, even on a station this size, powered by the largest hypermatter reactor ever built. However, given the surface to vacuum defense, the number of fighters, turbolaser batteries, charged-particle blasters, magnetic railguns, proton torpedo banks, ion cannons, and a host of other protective devices, no naval ship of any size would be a remote threat.

The statement later in the book: page 289:


The station was as fast as any ship in the Imperial Navy, and faster than most.

may be slightly inaccurate in that respect. It also says that "the hyperspace lanes had been cleared by Imperial order" which might explain why the trip to Alderaan is so fast that "it seemed that it had taken no time at all to reach the Alderaan system."


It's things like these that had me stop reading new star wars novels and comics 10 years ago.

If only half of such things are true, nothing that happened in the movies was actually happening. Everything we've seen was some kind of ancient conspirancy, super-force-wizard, or stormtrooper-underwear-designer playing an elaborate ruse to fool the viewers into believing that it's a different universe than a Star Trek/Dragonlance crossover.

The events in the movies still happen- the difference is Palpatine has one good reason to establish the Empire, as well as many not-so-good reasons

(greed for power, desire to get revenge on the Jedi Order, and so on)

[Tirian]

In Star Wars Infinities: A New Hope, the destruction of Yavin shortly after Alderaan does not, in fact, trigger galaxy-wide rebellion. In fact, the galaxy settles down pretty quickly.

By contrast, in the video game Star Wars Rebellion, using the Death Star to destroy a system is a significantly bad PR move, majorly in the sector and minorly thoughout the remaining Core worlds. I'm not saying that the Empire couldn't impose control in critical sectors, just that the sense that their are hundreds of planets out there to control and their resources are not infinite. I suspect that there are far more worlds out there that would fear that they were next than there are that actually could be next.

[hamishspence]

And yes, SW ships easily reach .90 C, in both novels and films. How do you think Han Solo got to Bespin without hyperdrive on limited supplies giving Luke time to train with Yoda? Time dilation, that's how.

Not likely. Luke's training was not something that took years- it all took place in the year 3ABY.

The Falcon has a Class 10 backup hyperdrive:
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Millenium_Falcon

That's how it got from the edge of the Hoth system to the Bespin system (the Anoat system is mid-way between the two).

Even the most generous description of ship sublight speeds says:

"The usual speeds achieved by sublight drive were quite substantial, amounting to a respectable fraction of lightspeed itself."

90% is a bit more than "a respectable fraction".



:smallsigh:

Space has no air in it. There is no 'maximum velocity' in space :smallsigh:

Space dust, at relativistic velocities, is dangerous. And there's also constraints.

Fuel (even if the fuel is leaving the back of the ship at nearly the speed of light, it takes an enormous amount of mass to get up to high speeds- and then decelerate down again).
And at speeds in excess of 1/10 the speed of light, it becomes ever more inefficient, requiring far more fuel for only a slight increase in speed.


Except, superlaser was precise enough to vaporize country-sized target, a city, or even a particular quarter. No one needs to kill the whole planet.

Does it actually say that? Even at 3% power it completely obliterates a Lucrehulk in one shot. Can it really be dialed down past continent-devastating power?

[Winterwind]

You mean thousands of kilometres per hour? Dozens of kilometers per second? Yes, that is slow :smalltongue:Relative to the speed of light - which is what we were talking about - it is. Even at, say, 0.25c, the factor by which mass is increased (time dilated, etc.) is merely 1.033, so practically negligible. You'd have to get much closer to c before relativistic effects would start significantly increasing the effectiveness of the ramming vessel.


:smallsigh:

Space has no air in it. There is no 'maximum velocity' in space :smallsigh:...
Of course not, but there is a maximum practically reachable velocity. It depends on the amount of time you are willing to keep accelerating, the power of your acceleration and the amount of fuel you can invest (if you get close enough to the velocity of light, so that relativistic effects come into play, there is also that you need increasingly higher and higher amounts of energy to accelerate by even a small amount).

I figured it was obvious that this was meant and required no spelling out.


And yes, SW ships easily reach .90 C, in both novels and films. How do you think Han Solo got to Bespin without hyperdrive on limited supplies giving Luke time to train with Yoda? Time dilation, that's how.Time dilation does not work that way. While time dilation can cut down the time for the traveller, in the outside world you will need a year to travel 0.9 light years at 0.9c. If Han Solo really did that, then either he practically was in the Bespin system already, or years would have passed in the outside world.
EDIT: I guess the "galaxy far far away" being extremely small, yet dense, would be another viable explanation for that. But, then space wouldn't be nearly as black as it is depicted - in fact, for being in space, the "galaxy far far away" actually seems oddly dark, as if it was decidedly less dense than our galaxy - so that's out, too.


Um... the term you're looking for is 'acceleration'. No, 'acceleration' is not the term I am looking for. If it was, I would have used it.

Acceleration has no bearing on the destructiveness of a projectile (or ramming vessel). Its velocity does. Hence, I spoke of velocity.

And before you say "there is no maximum velocity", I figured it was obvious that I meant the maximum velocity a projectile could reach before impacting in the target (or, in the case of a non-self-propelled projectile, leaving the gun), which is obviously limited by the limited distance between target and attacker. I just didn't think this required spelling out.

And what's with your condescending tone? Would you cut this out, please? :smallannoyed:

Though I have to admit that you trying to preach about physics to a physicist, of all people, does sort of amuse me... :smalltongue:


And, said projectiles would be useless, anyway, due to strength of SW shields and space they'd need to deploy themselves....which is exactly what I was trying to argue for? :smallconfused:

[Mando Knight]

Does it actually say that? Even at 3% power it completely obliterates a Lucrehulk in one shot. Can it really be dialed down past continent-devastating power?

3% is city-crusher, not continent-devastator. A Lucrehulk-class battleship is roughly 3km in diameter, significantly smaller than any continent I'm aware of.

[Trazoi]

So ... what if Luke had missed with the proton torpedoes? How can the Death Star be stopped?

How would YOU do it?
Smuggle aboard a Star Destroyer sized amount of Corellian ale, get the entire Imperial Navy drunk, then challenge them to a game of chicken with a nearby sun.

[Irbis]

The statement later in the book: page 289

Ah, I only remembered the second line.


By contrast, in the video game Star Wars Rebellion, using the Death Star to destroy a system is a significantly bad PR move, majorly in the sector and minorly thoughout the remaining Core worlds.

Only if you destroy something in the Core. No one cares if you killed anything outside of it :smallwink:

Helps stop the uprisings, too, only if planet near 100% support for the rebellion the uprising won't stop.


I'm not saying that the Empire couldn't impose control in critical sectors, just that the sense that their are hundreds of planets out there to control and their resources are not infinite. I suspect that there are far more worlds out there that would fear that they were next than there are that actually could be next.

Which was the general idea. Still, in Rebellion, you can destroy every single planet in the galaxy, given enough time, you only need to safeguard your battle station from incidents :smallwink:


Not likely. Luke's training was not something that took years- it all took place in the year 3ABY.

But, nevertheless, it took several months at least.


The Falcon has a Class 10 backup hyperdrive:
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Millenium_Falcon

That's how it got from the edge of the Hoth system to the Bespin system (the Anoat system is mid-way between the two).

I'm well aware the RPG gave Falcon x10 drive. However, in the movie, it does not exist, or is damaged as well - otherwise Han Solo wouldn't make an idiot out of himself by vacating piloting station (when he has ISD on his tail!) to repair it when it malfunctioned, he would have pulled second lever. There are 4 moments they could have used the spare, it is never used. And, if they really had spare, Han wouldn't have checked what he could have reached; spare has as much range as main drive.


Even the most generous description of ship sublight speeds says:

"The usual speeds achieved by sublight drive were quite substantial, amounting to a respectable fraction of lightspeed itself."

90% is a bit more than "a respectable fraction".

Only a bit :smallwink:

Ok, I know it is too much, but that's the number NJO books started to casually throw around Star by Star. It surprised me too, but with acceleration SW ships are supposed to have (3000-5000 G at minimum, according to Technical Commentaries) it isn't that hard to reach (I tried to calculate that, but then remembered you need special equation for relativistic speeds then gave up).


Space dust, at relativistic velocities, is dangerous. And there's also constraints.

Fuel (even if the fuel is leaving the back of the ship at nearly the speed of light, it takes an enormous amount of mass to get up to high speeds- and then decelerate down again).
And at speeds in excess of 1/10 the speed of light, it becomes ever more inefficient, requiring far more fuel for only a slight increase in speed.

Space dust? They have shields. As for the fuel - first, we need to assume Falcon doesn't simply scoop more along the way, second, that the repulsor (gravitational) engines don't screw the equation by adding acceleration of their own or by, say, temporarily increasing weight/energy of the exhaust.


Does it actually say that? Even at 3% power it completely obliterates a Lucrehulk in one shot. Can it really be dialed down past continent-devastating power?

Page 276, Death Star - main gunner muses about destroying cities and boiling lakes, then goes to levelling continents and boiling seas. And, of course, that 3% power incident.

Still, even if it can't be dialed much more, you still have 5000+ Turbolasers to set precisely the amount of overkill you need.


I figured it was obvious that this was meant and required no spelling out.

Actually, from the rest of your post - if that really was the message you tried to convey, at least to me it seemed you tried to argue for precisely opposite thing in half of it.


Time dilation does not work that way. While time dilation can cut down the time for the traveller, in the outside world you will need a year to travel 0.9 light years at 0.9c. If Han Solo really did that, then either he practically was in the Bespin system already, or years would have passed in the outside world.

Months, at least, yes, passed. This at least seems to be best fit in both fanon and official sources (already mentioned Technical Commentaries by Saxton) for the events of ESB, allowing Luke time to train before he got a vision of his friends.


EDIT: I guess the "galaxy far far away" being extremely small, yet dense, would be another viable explanation for that. But, then space wouldn't be nearly as black as it is depicted - in fact, for being in space, the "galaxy far far away" actually seems oddly dark, as if it was decidedly less dense than our galaxy - so that's out, too.

Strange you say that, Saxton says it is too bright in spaces :smallwink:


Acceleration has no bearing on the destructiveness of a projectile (or ramming vessel). Its velocity does. Hence, I spoke of velocity.

It does on the effectiveness and deployment range of this projectile, two most important things in targetting non-stationary targets.


And before you say "there is no maximum velocity", I figured it was obvious that I meant the maximum velocity a projectile could reach before impacting in the target (or, in the case of a non-self-propelled projectile, leaving the gun), which is obviously limited by the limited distance between target and attacker.

If so, acceleration is even more important.


And what's with your condescending tone? Would you cut this out, please?

Hm? What tone? :smallconfused:


Though I have to admit that you trying to preach about physics to a physicist, of all people, does sort of amuse me... :smalltongue:

Well, you yourself admitted you cut corners in too many ways :smalltongue:

I could have argued for a few things, say, that unlike Earth's surface in space you needed a fixed reference point for the term 'velocity' to even have meaning in what you proposed, but then I decided I'm not bored enough to turn the discussion into physicsfest and leaved all such details lying :P


...which is exactly what I was trying to argue for? :smallconfused:

You did? :smallconfused: As above.

[Winterwind]

Actually, from the rest of your post - if that really was the message you tried to convey, at least to me it seemed you tried to argue for precisely opposite thing in half of it.What I was arguing for was that we have few if any evidence indicating that the practically reachable realspace velocity of Star Wars vessels is particularly high (only leaving out the "practically reachable" part, figuring it was obvious that this was what was meant). Obviously, I was wrong regarding that, as evidenced by statements made by both yourself and others, and Star Wars vessels can indeed practically reach realspace velocities near that of that light.


Months, at least, yes, passed. This at least seems to be best fit in both fanon and official sources (already mentioned Technical Commentaries by Saxton) for the events of ESB, allowing Luke time to train before he got a vision of his friends.Alright then. Fair enough.

...they sure could have made this clearer in the movie though. :smallbiggrin:


Strange you say that, Saxton says it is too bright in spaces :smallwink:Mmm... it is too bright in the sense that the ships are all bright, white and illuminated, even when far away from any clear source of light. It is too dark in the sense that there are fewer stars to be seen in the background than on a clear starlit night, whereas in actual space, with no atmosphere to interfer, there should actually be more stars, not less.
Though now that I think about it, I think that's true only for the original trilogy (to blame which is probably unfair on my part, since it may have been largely due to technological limitations). The new trilogy shows, if I remember correctly, decidedly more stuff in the background, quite possibly overly so.


It does on the effectiveness and deployment range of this projectile, two most important things in targetting non-stationary targets.

If so, acceleration is even more important.Acceleration is important only indirectly, by influencing the terminal velocity upon impact (as well as maneuverability of the projectile if it is homing and the delay between shooting and impact, which may influence the chance of the target to evade or shoot down the projectile). Once it impacts though, you won't care how much or whether the projectile had been accelerating immediately before impact; all you will care about will be the terminal velocity of the projectile (and the mass, shape, type of warhead, etc., but that's beside this discussion), because that will be what determines how much destruction this impact causes. You won't even care how exactly the projectile accelerated to that velocity; it may have accelerated very much in the beginning and been moving at a steady pace since, or it could have accelerated steadily throughout its course, or accelerated in some irregular pattern, or whatever - it just doesn't matter.

...why did you bring this up in the first place, and why are you so insistingly continuing to argue this point? It is not relevant to the discussion at hand in the slightest - all I was saying was that if the Star Wars universe had vessels capable of reaching impact speeds upon ramming that would wreck enemy ships, they would definitely also have guns capable of doing the same.


Hm? What tone? :smallconfused::smallsigh:
"Space has no air in it. There is no 'maximum velocity' in space :smallsigh:"
Yes. Sigh at the stupidity of the other person. Twice. No way could they be aware of this fact.

"Um... the term you're looking for is 'acceleration'. "
Yes. Put words into the other person's mouth, because clearly they are too stupid to know what they are saying themselves.

If that's not what you meant, my apologies, but this is precisely what arrived on my end. :smallwink:


Well, you yourself admitted you cut corners in too many ways :smalltongue:Pardon the question, but would you happen to be a mathematician? Because the insistence on clear-cut definitions where everyone else just would go with the most likely common sense meaning of what the other person might have meant sure indicates so. :smalltongue:
(For clarification, I consider having that much of an analytical mind a positive quality, so the above is actually meant as a compliment :smallwink:)


I could have argued for a few things, say, that unlike Earth's surface in space you needed a fixed reference point for the term 'velocity' to even have meaning in what you proposed, but then I decided I'm not bored enough to turn the discussion into physicsfest and leaved all such details lying :P...you could have done that, but really, isn't it clear to everyone that some fixed reference point is assumed? Does everything need to be spelled out? What's next, having to define what the "space" and the "vacuum" is the ships are moving through? :smalltongue:


You did? :smallconfused: As above.Yes. This entire post served only to prove that ramming will not accomplish anything, because if it did, their regular weapons would be just as effective.

Which you seem to have recognized, too, judging by:


Their vessels can withstand their regular weapons, so either their weapons are more effective than close-to-light-velocity projectiles already
Ayup. At least the size their guns could propel.so I am rather confused as to why you seem to be surprised by this now.

[pendell]

How about this:

Build nanomachines which consume metal/durasteel/other death star components and use the material to manufacture copies of themselves, which repeat the same program. Deliver these to the Death Star in warheads. They reproduce by geometric progression. If the Death Star crew finds a way to stop it, they should at least badly damage the ship. Very likely they'll eventually eat something important and destroy it outright -- from the description in the Death Star novel, it's a minor miracle that this monstrously unstable vessel doesn't explode into dust due to the power it contains that is barely under control.



Page 276, Death Star - main gunner muses about destroying cities and boiling lakes, then goes to levelling continents and boiling seas. And, of course, that 3% power incident.

Still, even if it can't be dialed much more, you still have 5000+ Turbolasers to set precisely the amount of overkill you need.


I'm struck by the image -- I wonder how far down the dial the setting goes? Could the Death Star use it's superlaser at .00000004% power, and heat a cup of tea on the planet surface? In some ways that would be just as terrifying as blowing a planet up.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[hamishspence]

I'm well aware the RPG gave Falcon x10 drive. However, in the movie, it does not exist, or is damaged as well - otherwise Han Solo wouldn't make an idiot out of himself by vacating piloting station (when he has ISD on his tail!) to repair it when it malfunctioned, he would have pulled second lever. There are 4 moments they could have used the spare, it is never used. And, if they really had spare, Han wouldn't have checked what he could have reached; spare has as much range as main drive.

It might have been damaged as well- and Han could have been able to fix the spare but not the main one.
Plus- if there's limited food, and water, and fuel- he would have checked for the nearest system.

For Luke's training, and the trip, to be only mere months, this strongly implies at least some hyperspace travel.

[Winterwind]

I think my approach would be, try to find the meanest, nastiest creatures to be found in the Star Wars universe - something similar to the Xenomorphs from the Alien franchise, ideally - and try to smuggle some of those on board of the Death Star. Wait for two weeks, and the vessel has turned into a ghost "ship". :smallcool:

Or, depending on just how well protected the hangars are, go for a boarding mission. Granted, that thing is going to have a massive crew, most likely in the millions, but they won't be able to fight all at once, not all of them will necessarily be combatants, and all it takes is for the boarding crew to reach a point where they can interfere with the Death Star's defences so much that further reinforcements can arrive moderately safely. In the vast Star Wars universe, there surely are some aliens that make vastly superior soldiers to humans, and with the Empire's anti-alien attitude, it shouldn't be too difficult to get a decent number of them to go for such a mission. The result may be a war inside the Death Star that goes on for months, potentially years, but as long as it takes the damn thing out of commission, that's good enough.

[hamishspence]

I think my approach would be, try to find the meanest, nastiest creatures to be found in the Star Wars universe - something similar to the Xenomorphs from the Alien franchise, ideally - and try to smuggle some of those on board of the Death Star. Wait for two weeks, and the vessel has turned into a ghost "ship". :smallcool:

Project Blackwing, in Death Troopers, might count- an alien material that turns the crew into zombie-like beings, able to spread the contagion.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Blackwing

It may itself be based on the entity Mnggal-Mnggal in the Unknown Regions- which does the same thing, and is rumoured to be the reason the Unknown Regions has a hyperspace anomaly making it hard to get to from the rest of the galaxy-

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mnggal-Mnggal

the anomaly is theorized to have been created by the ancient precursor race The Celestials (creators of Centerpoint, the Maw Black Hole Cluster, etc) to contain this entity.

[Mando Knight]

Space has no air in it. There is no 'maximum velocity' in space

Technically, there are two, the exact same two that limit the velocity of aircraft:

1.) Lightspeed. Without breaking physics as we know it, you can't even hit this.
2.) Your vehicle's design. Although you don't need to worry about aerodynamics tearing your ship apart (like a badly designed aircraft with an overpowered engine), your maximum ΔV is still limited by your engine and fuel. One means of rating launch vehicles IRL is to use the maximum kinetic energy they can impart to their payload (which then defines the limits to your possible orbital parameters).

It just happens that aerodynamics limit the max ΔV more than the fuel capacity in atmospheric flight (except when you're low on fuel), and causes carried fuel to mostly determine range.

[pendell]

Technically, there are two, the exact same two that limit the velocity of aircraft:

1.) Lightspeed. Without breaking physics as we know it, you can't even hit this.
2.) Your vehicle's design. Although you don't need to worry about aerodynamics tearing your ship apart (like a badly designed aircraft with an overpowered engine), your maximum ΔV is still limited by your engine and fuel. One means of rating launch vehicles IRL is to use the maximum kinetic energy they can impart to their payload (which then defines the limits to your possible orbital parameters).

It just happens that aerodynamics limit the max ΔV more than the fuel capacity in atmospheric flight (except when you're low on fuel), and causes carried fuel to mostly determine range.


I felt a disturbance in the Force, as if the voices of millions of catgirls had cried out in terror ... and were suddenly silenced. I fear someone has spoken Science in the thread.

:smalltongue:

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Mando Knight]

Actually, by this time, I suspect that the only catgirls left are the ones that reproduce (or are made stronger) when exposed to science.

[goldendragon]

I'm surprised that people didn't think of this. As far as I know, there are not any secret lockers which contain supplies of spacesuits. If you destroy the airlocks, then most of the people won't be able to fight. Then unleash a boarding party with space suits on. Any resistance would be crushed, a time bomb could be set and BOOM! End of problem.

Rebellion 1, Empire 0.

[Mando Knight]

1) Destroy the airlocks how?
2) Blast doors. Everywhere. Even if you do take out all of the hangar bay seals, you've now got to get through the blast doors.
3) Stormtrooper armor is rated for 20 minutes of zero-atmosphere operation.
4) Spacetroopers.
5) It would take practically forever for all the air to empty out of a station that size.
6) Just because the space suits weren't used in ANH doesn't mean they're not there, it means they didn't use them.

[hamishspence]

3% is city-crusher, not continent-devastator. A Lucrehulk-class battleship is roughly 3km in diameter, significantly smaller than any continent I'm aware of.

But also shielded- with shields that, if you believe the EU- can take turbolaser hits of megatons or even gigatons.

And the whole thing was utterly destroyed (not even hulked- but completely destroyed) in one shot.

Firepower that can do that to a capital ship, might to much worse to an unshielded planet spot.

[Tazar]

Given how shoddy the security aboard Death Star I is, it should be child's play for an elite commando team to sneak aboard and plant explosive devices to blow the reactor, or structurally compromise the station.

[Mando Knight]

Given how shoddy the security aboard Death Star I is, it should be child's play for an elite commando team to sneak aboard and plant explosive devices to blow the reactor, or structurally compromise the station.

On the other hand, the troops on the Death Star were implied to be purposefully failing at killing the Rebels so they could flee to their secret base: like Leia said, "They let us go." On the Tantive IV, they took out the ship's entire crew with fairly few casualties while shooting from the hip.

On Endor, though, I have no idea why the Empire could have lost. I mean, come on. Teddy bears?

[Tazar]

On the other hand, the troops on the Death Star were implied to be purposefully failing at killing the Rebels so they could flee to their secret base: like Leia said, "They let us go." On the Tantive IV, they took out the ship's entire crew with fairly few casualties while shooting from the hip.

On Endor, though, I have no idea why the Empire could have lost. I mean, come on. Teddy bears?

I think the initial infiltration was not as the Empire had planned, however; they plant the tracking device once Vader realizes that Kenobi is there. The stormtrooper assault on the detention cell level could easily have killed all four of the main characters before they escaped, and if they had wanted to let them go there, they wouldn't have ordered an all-out stormtrooper assault, nor activated the trash compactors.

[Dr.Epic]

It has a slow hyperdrive, but it does have a hyperdrive. So it can threaten the galaxy.

The rebels should make their own then. That'd be kick ass! Seeing those things battle each other.

[hamishspence]

Costs too much. Cheaper to hijack an existing superlaser ship.

For some reason, the Rebels sabotaged the Conqueror, a superlaser ship built shortly after the Battle of Yavin, rather than try and take it for themselves.

[Geno9999]

My plan would be to destroy the thing from the inside out. I'm pretty sure we've covered that the Death Star is essentially invincible from a frontal attack, so that is promptly thrown out into the vacuum of space and then Force lightning for good measure.
Therefore, my plan is to disguise a elite team of demomen as the maintenance crew and sneak them onto the Death Star. When they're "working" on the vital components (power generators, the laser, etc.) and then remotely blow the whole thing. Stripped of the innerworkings, the Death Star is nothing more than a glorified satellite, setting the Empire back for months.

[Forum Explorer]

I think my plan would be wait until it was near a planet or star then board the thing and try and take over the pilot's seat and crash it into the planet/star.


Also I now can't get the idea of the Emperor using a death star as a fine tuned execution device. Now that would be terrifying

"These rebels are sentanced to death!" Giant green laser frys them from space without harming the auidence. :smalleek:

[Mando Knight]

I think my plan would be wait until it was near a planet or star then board the thing and try and take over the pilot's seat and crash it into the planet/star.

That's what they did in Infinities: ANH, though you'd need to be a heroic character (such as Yoda and R2) in order to hijack the thing. Mostly because if you're going to try, you'll have to make sure you don't run into a Sith Lord while you're there, and then keep it on track at least until you're sure any enemy reinforcements can't tell the system to re-stabilize orbit.

[Tazar]

That's what they did in Infinities: ANH, though you'd need to be a heroic character (such as Yoda and R2) in order to hijack the thing. Mostly because if you're going to try, you'll have to make sure you don't run into a Sith Lord while you're there, and then keep it on track at least until you're sure any enemy reinforcements can't tell the system to re-stabilize orbit.

What's Infinities? And where are they pulling Sith Lords from circa the Battle of Yavin? :P

[hamishspence]

Vader did clone the Sith-Lord level character Galen Marek at that time. And at least one Jedi Master (Jerec) defected to the Emperor, learned dark side powers, and was around then.

Infinities are "what if" stories- one of which, was

"What if Luke's torpedo detonated prematurely- so the Death Star's attack on Yavin was only delayed?"

[Fjolnir]

I'm struck by the image -- I wonder how far down the dial the setting goes? Could the Death Star use it's superlaser at .00000004% power, and heat a cup of tea on the planet surface? In some ways that would be just as terrifying as blowing a planet up.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Actually I think that this might be MORE frightening, due to the sheer amount of targeting accuracy that the lasers have to exhibit to perform the task, blasting a planet, a continent, a city to bits with a space laser is chump change. Turning a single person into a torso with a cauterized lump where his head used to be with no surrounding collateral damage? From space? a tad bit more difficult.

[Mando Knight]

And where are they pulling Sith Lords from circa the Battle of Yavin? :P

Vader and Palpatine. Unless you're Yoda, the best Jedi Hunter in the galaxy (Boba Fett!), a Jedi Master, or Skywalker after he was trained by Yoda, you're pretty much doomed from the start.

[hamishspence]

And even without Sith Lords- the Empire has access to Dark Jedi of considerable power.

[Forum Explorer]

well have several different groups, each heading for a different objective in the death star. Such as the reactor, the firing controls, other things that could be more important than the bridge. With the size of the Death Star that should keep Vader busy enough.

As for heroic characters: R2, Luke, Han, and Chewie should all be available. Most important would be R2 if he could shut all the blast doors that lead away from the objectives that would severly slow the stormtroops + Vader down.


Also what happened in the Infinities story?

[hamishspence]

Also what happened in the Infinities story?

Quite a lot- link here sums up the Infinities: A New Hope events:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Wars_Infinities:_A_New_Hope

[Fjolnir]

As for heroic characters: R2, Luke, Han, and Chewie should all be available. Most important would be R2 if he could shut all the blast doors that lead away from the objectives that would severly slow the stormtroops + Vader down.


That line reminds me of the star wars minis game, where R2 D2 is insanely busted due to his abilty to remotely close blast doors in the game, basically you make a team of nasty high range units and try your best to get as many of them as possible into a room with only one or 2 entrances and get R2 inside as quickly as possible, then your turns become Round starts: your units move to the door, opening it. Then you cycle down your units, firing upon anything in range, then when R2's turn comes around, you close the door again. It is fairly effective though once you win a couple of tourneys that way, you end up seeing a ton of general droid hosing come into play...