Stupidest EU superweapon

[darthscott]

The Shawken device is a pretty stupid superweapon, but at least I give them credit for thinking big.

The Sun Crusher is not all that great either, but I do like the idea of resonance torpedoes. One thing that has always bothered me is the lack of superweapons outside the Imperial Era. For being in space for thousands and thousands of years I would figure some sort of planet busting bomb would have been developed early on in galactic history and be a common feature in major military forces.

[Terralthra]

The Shawken device is a pretty stupid superweapon, but at least I give them credit for thinking big.

The Sun Crusher is not all that great either, but I do like the idea of resonance torpedoes. One thing that has always bothered me is the lack of superweapons outside the Imperial Era. For being in space for thousands and thousands of years I would figure some sort of planet busting bomb would have been developed early on in galactic history and be a common feature in major military forces.

Strategically speaking, super-weapons are only good for deterrence in the SW universe. If ISDs can already deny a planet to an enemy (see Base Delta Zero), what do you need to blow it up for? The DS and so on were part of the 'Tarkin Doctrine.'

The Tarkin Doctrine suggested the creation of Oversectors to more properly handle Rebel threats in a group of systems, the use of the HoloNet to coordinate Sector Groups, and the concept of rule through fear of force, rather than force itself, with a weapon of unimaginable power as the symbol of this fear.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Because the drive exhaust of any ships in the ISD-range of mass will make them mass extinction events if the average inhabited planet does not have some sort of navigation shielding or technology to manage the immense energies tossed around by even freighters moving in near-planet docking or roundezvous maneuvers. Not to mention the fact that a continental shield was equipped by a middle-of-nowhere rebel base. Many fully industrialized and populated planets should boast a global shield of some intensity as a matter of course; besides the fact that common planetary shields must exist to mandate the commission and deployment of bombard fleets to most SECTGRU throughout the Empire.

The Death Stars were practical weapons; Core Worlds could be expected to boast planetary shields capable of even momentarily dissipating the Death Star's relativistic planetary mass-scattering beam. No conventional array of starships with incoherent salvos of even equivalent firepower could match the capability of this singular strategic weapon.

[Illuminatus Primus]

The World Devestators.

I hate Dark Empire at any rate, but the idea of these mobile factories which build themselves is just absurd, let alone the idea that they can take on *dedicated combat warships* and just ignore them! I mean the thing is a glorified FACTORY, not an SSD! The vast majority of its internal space is dedicated to the technology that sucks up stuff from other ships or the ground or whatever, as well as the production centers they build things.

Uh, they weren't going to DBZ the surface to kill the World Devestators; you see them shrugging off blasts at sea level in a terrestrial atmosphere, and you're assuming they were gigaton-level events?

Even ISD sized ships can hit an SSD hard enough to at least *slightly* damage it, the idea that all these heavy Mon Cals, including one that dueled with an SSD later and lived to tell the tail, albeit with heavy damage, just couldn't scratch the things is just absurd.

NRS Mon Remonda (which survived a combat involving the Executor-class battlecruiser Iron Fist) was not killed by a World Devastator, but lost a slugfight with an Imperial Star Destroyer (unspecified type). Anyway, your comic-esque "B is stronger than C, and A beat B therefore A should always beat C" model for combat is not a cogent argument. Battleships were poorly designed to defeat diminutive torpedo boats, necessitating the development of torpedo boat destroyers. But are torpedo boat destroyers stronger than battleships or capable of surviving gun battles with them?

Now the concept *itself* I didn't mind at all as a system to point at uninhabited but resource rich worlds and watch as a year later a fleet is ready to launch from the orbital shipyards they built, but as a 'superweapon'? The wank is strong with this one...

To be serious, it is an excessively slow and vulnerable terror weapon; designed to impress shock and awe in opponents but not be effective at straight-up combat. Really, they are heavily armed, armored, and shielded self-replicating construction droids.

[Coalition]

The World Devestators.

I hate Dark Empire at any rate, but the idea of these mobile factories which build themselves is just absurd, let alone the idea that they can take on *dedicated combat warships* and just ignore them! I mean the thing is a glorified FACTORY, not an SSD! The vast majority of its internal space is dedicated to the technology that sucks up stuff from other ships or the ground or whatever, as well as the production centers they build things.

To be serious, it is an excessively slow and vulnerable terror weapon; designed to impress shock and awe in opponents but not be effective at straight-up combat. Really, they are heavily armed, armored, and shielded self-replicating construction droids.

Well, looking at the volume used by a WD vs an ISD is interesting. An ISD is ~1 mile long, half mile wide, and quarter mile tall (ignoring the tower). A solid block that size is one eights of a cubic mile.

However, it is a wedge shape, which means I should use the equation for pyramids, which is area of base * height / 3. So instead of 1/8th of a cubic mile, it is 1/24th of a cubic mile. The 'base' is the diamond shaped end of an ISD, so you take the 'width' and 'height', and halve those. It is now 1/48th of a cubic mile in volume.

So a WD that is the same L, W, and H of an ISD has 6 times the effective volume, ignoring the narrow neck in the middle of every WD (reduce volume by 1/3?). That neck would make it 4 times the effective volume of an ISD.

The ship that attacked the ISD though (Silencer-7), was 2 miles long, which means it had eight times the volume of its smaller buddies. So it effectively had 32 times the volume of the ISD it attacked. Even if 90% of it was factory machinery, it still had 3 times the combat capability of the ISD. Add to that the WD was coming up from the planet, at close range to the ISD, and its 'mouth' worked best at close ranges, and I can understand why the ISD lost.

So a WD can defeat an ISD, if it has effectively 10:1 odds in its favor, and starts out at short range.

[Darth Culator]

I never did get the Galaxy Gun. For better or worse, SW hyperspace "rules" make it virtually impossible to get from point A to point B in a straight line, especially when either point is somewhere in the Core.

So the projectiles need to be able to navigate. And if they have their own hyperdrive systems, what do you need the gun for?

[Illuminatus Primus]

That is a good point; you think they could just have self-propelled and launched suicide-ships. Anyway, I think the idea is that this way the propulsion and hyperdrive units only have to pull the projectile out of hyperspace and manage terminal maneuvers. The gun does that bitch work of really putting it into hyperspace and giving it speed. I don't mind innovative hyperspace missiles as weapons in general, but the universal shield penetrator, apparently invulnerable shielding, and technobabble wank chain-reaction warhead was a bit much. If I were ever to write a post-DE AU fanfic, I would nerf the weapon considerably, and add improvised countermeasures, such that it'd work fine enough when the enemy was not expecting such weapons, but they can be countered and diminished in effectiveness (vs. the Death Star, which is just an exercise is tremendous force).

[Sidewinder]

Galaxy Gun: I didn't read 'Dark Empire II', but the '10 Star Wars Superweapons' article seemed to describe a technically feasible, if uneconomical, weapon.

Sun Crusher: Kevin J. Anderson wanks it in an attempt to prove his dick is bigger than George Lucas', or rather, his superweapon is more dangerous than the Death Star. Luke Skywalker gets a lobotomy to make him stupid enough to let the disembodied spirits of Sith Lords fuck up the heads of his Jedi apprentices, one of whom makes the Sun Crusher a threat to peace-- again.

Darksaber: A good idea that was poorly executed. If the Imperials built it-- hell, if the Hutts decided to hire the most skilled workers money can buy instead of the lowest bidder-- it would've been a real threat.

Centerpoint: I didn't read the stories where it appeared in. No comment.

World Devastator(s): From what I remember of 'Dark Empire', it strip mines a planet for resources to build Imperial war machines. A good idea, although the story it appeared in was crap.

Star Forge: I haven't played 'Knights of the Old Republic' yet, but the '10 Star Wars Superweapons' article describes something more useful than every other weapon on this list-- combined!

[nightmare]

Other: the Omega Frost.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Other: the Omega Frost.

How is a cold-based weapon at all practicable in total vacuum?

[nightmare]

Other: the Omega Frost.

How is a cold-based weapon at all practicable in total vacuum?

Yes, well... it's not. Lack of water to freeze is just the beginning of its problems though. It's also supposed to freeze in space, which is already near zero kelvin. What's more, the thing isn't easily moveable, so you'll just have to set it up as a trap for unexpecting passer-by ships. Plus, if it actually worked, it would only freeze the ships in place. An Imperial fleet would have to be assembled to kill the trapped ships. Pretty much the epitome of silliness if you ask me.