Did the Death Star have a hidden purpose?

[Straha]

Also, in the days of the old EU, it was heavily hinted that Vader had a pretty good idea who this kid was after their encounter in Splinter of a Mind's Eye

SOME was decanonized long ago even under LFL.

1. A quick skim of the current canon of Wookiepedia reveals that Vader and Luke had a confrontation between ANH and ESB where Vader disarmed Luke temporarily and realized that Luke had Anakin's old lightsaber. Which, again, basically draws all the lines right back to "HE'S YOUR SON." To say that Vader missed this would be the height of absurdity.

2. Even if Vader doesn't know, Palpatine surely does. Palpatine knew that Padme escaped with Obi-Wan, that Padme was pregnant, and can reasonably infer that someone who shows up with Obi-Wan who is strong in the force and whose last name is Skywalker is related to Anakin. Palpatine also has to know that the moment this happens he's under a ticking clock because the second Vader realizes that Palps lied to him post ensuiting that's going to lead to some tensions in their relationship, and those sorts of tensions are how Sith Apprentices tend to turn into Sith Masters with blood on their hands. And, again, it requires a deep level of denial of context to imagine that Palpatine only put the pieces together after the invasion of Hoth and if he did it paints a picture of a Palpatine who is deeply myopic about some basic shit, definitely not Sith Master material.

3. The original conversation between Vader and Palps in ESB has them both on the same page knowing who Luke Skywalker is and that he's "the Son of Skywalker". The entire original cut of the movie has them acting in that context. The special edition of ESB only changes that conversation somewhat, but the main change is that we have a much more nuanced understanding of the relationship between Emperor and Vader, and that they're both lying to each other. Vader's first question when Palpatine says "he's your kid" is "how is that possible?" because Palpatine told him he killed Padme before she could give birth. When Palpatine declares this flatly he's giving up the foundational lie of their post-prequel relationship. Given the original context of the movie, the fact that no other major scene changes take place, and the nuance of the Vader-Palpatine relationship it makes negative sense to think either of the characters were blindsided when they first have the conversation with each other where they reveal what they know. This is especially true because the disturbance in the force that they feel is Obi-Wan contacting Luke from beyond the grave and guiding him to Yoda, and if Luke actually becomes a full fledged and trained Jedi then it's entirely possible he kills them both before they can spring the trap on Luke. Hence the need to drop the pretense and get on the same page ASAP.

[Gandalf]

I love the idea of Sir Humphrey dressed up like the advisors on the DSII. Also the idea that the imperial civil service has a whole brace of delay tactics that they deploy against the Emperor to get their way while avoiding being electrocuted.

Interestingly, depending on the relationship between the Senate and the Imperial Public Service, the dissolution of the Senate might have led to a massive runaway civil service. Assuming the Senate had oversight, the IPS is functionally unaccountable provided they don't upset the Emperor's inner circle.

No more questions from the Senator from Malastare about why the Imperial Department of Infrastructure had a massive overspend on a private contract, or why something was built in system X as opposed to system Y.

A public service free of politicians. Truly a utopia.

[Straha]

I love the idea of Sir Humphrey dressed up like the advisors on the DSII. Also the idea that the imperial civil service has a whole brace of delay tactics that they deploy against the Emperor to get their way while avoiding being electrocuted.

Interestingly, depending on the relationship between the Senate and the Imperial Public Service, the dissolution of the Senate might have led to a massive runaway civil service. Assuming the Senate had oversight, the IPS is functionally unaccountable provided they don't upset the Emperor's inner circle.

No more questions from the Senator from Malastare about why the Imperial Department of Infrastructure had a massive overspend on a private contract, or why something was built in system X as opposed to system Y.

A public service free of politicians. Truly a utopia.

Can you imagine their brief moment of euphoria after the DSII blew up and there were no more Sith left to boss them around. A government with no leadership. No succession. No wizards to bother them. Just... Civil Servants up and down the line.

The sheer joy they must have felt. Truly unmatched.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I love the idea of Sir Humphrey dressed up like the advisors on the DSII. Also the idea that the imperial civil service has a whole brace of delay tactics that they deploy against the Emperor to get their way while avoiding being electrocuted.

Interestingly, depending on the relationship between the Senate and the Imperial Public Service, the dissolution of the Senate might have led to a massive runaway civil service. Assuming the Senate had oversight, the IPS is functionally unaccountable provided they don't upset the Emperor's inner circle.

No more questions from the Senator from Malastare about why the Imperial Department of Infrastructure had a massive overspend on a private contract, or why something was built in system X as opposed to system Y.

A public service free of politicians. Truly a utopia.

Can you imagine their brief moment of euphoria after the DSII blew up and there were no more Sith left to boss them around. A government with no leadership. No succession. No wizards to bother them. Just... Civil Servants up and down the line.

The sheer joy they must have felt. Truly unmatched.

To quote the Sea Captain: "That's gonna replace the whale in my nightmares..."

[Straha]

A passing thought re: the OP question of "Is Mass Death necessary for the Sith?"

Exegol and the Xyston Star Destroyers (ugh) would indicate that the Sith independently had the technology to create miniaturized planet destroying weapons that could be fitted on cruisers without overwhelming difficulty. Given the remoteness of the planet, the isolation of the staff, and the fact that it was seemingly all mastered by Palpatine (ugh ugh ugh) I think this maybe sells an idea that in-universe it was actually Palpatine and the Sith who developed the planet destroying technology, not Tarkin et al. inside the Empire (or if they did, they were playing around with a partial idea fed to them by Palpatine.)

Having the technology but not using it would run counter to the "This empowers the Sith" narrative, and would also play up an angle of "The Death Star was an unnecessary device/investment." Maybe it was a sort of space potlatch, either a path to keep the Empire busy and visibly reassured by the Emperor or a way to expend massive amounts of resources from the Empire that could otherwise be used to strengthen the central Imperial bureaucracy in a way that could otherwise be targeted against him?

[MKSheppard]

A passing thought re: the OP question of "Is Mass Death necessary for the Sith?"

Exegol and the Xyston Star Destroyers (ugh) would indicate that the Sith independently had the technology to create miniaturized planet destroying weapons that could be fitted on cruisers without overwhelming difficulty.

The Disney Trilogy is non canon, because it plays so fast and loose with the established setting of Star Wars; i.e.

Hyperdrive Skip Jumps
Hyperdrives can be activated within hangar bays
Hyperdrive Ramming

LUKE:
Are you kidding? At the rate they're gaining...

HAN:
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?

If you could always blast into hyperspace from within planets or ship bays....why was there all the rigmarole in A NEW HOPE about that Star Destroyer chasing down the Falcon over Tatooine, when the Falcon could just have punched into hyperspace within Docking Bay 34 on Tatooine, or at 500m above ground level on Tatooine?

Likewise, the current High Republic Era is non canon, because of once again, Hyperspace.

Light of the Jedi opens with an unprecedented disaster the Republic suddenly finds its expansion programs dealing with: a passenger/cargo freighter called the Legacy Run, attempting to avoid debris in a hyperspace lane, breaks up while still at lightspeed. Not only is everyone on board—mostly migrants venturing out into the frontier to start new lives—seemingly killed, the broken-up wreckage of the Legacy Run begins to shunt out of lightspeed and into normal space, becoming screaming projectiles of mass destruction that can hit anywhere from the Core Worlds to the Outer Rim.

If a minor ship accident can threaten scores of rich, well protected planets due to hyperspace accidents...

... then how come han solo and others are flying shitbuckets in the OT?

If hyperdrives could pose such a danger to galactic society from simple malfunctions, then the shipping industry would be extremely tightly regulated by the authorities, with no room for heavily modified light freighters packing 5 times the engine for their size; IOW, there would be no room for lovable rogues like Han Solo smuggling in a badly maintained hotrodded light freighter.

I think this maybe sells an idea that in-universe it was actually Palpatine and the Sith who developed the planet destroying technology, not Tarkin et al. inside the Empire (or if they did, they were playing around with a partial idea fed to them by Palpatine.)

The current Disney explanation for the Death Star is that it uses a massive kyber crystal for focusing -- which are also used in lightsabers.

At first glance, my first thought was to say that's dumb, because not everything has to involve the Force, or the Jedi or Sith.

But after thinking about it, I just realized it's not about the Force, or any of that bullshit. It's about the Jedi Order keeping control over the only material they know of that can focus and handle the massive energies required of a planet buster or star buster -- basically, the Jedi are also Arms Controllers keeping control of space plutonium.

If you go with that explanation, it explains how the CIS in the Prequels were only able to get to the blueprinting stage for the Death Star concept (shown in ROTS) -- because they weren't able to get enough kyber crystals to perform engineering tests and studies to actually firm up the design. The Empire following Order 66 was able to get enough Kyber to do those engineering tests and bring the Death Star to a functional design.

[MKSheppard]

or a way to expend massive amounts of resources from the Empire that could otherwise be used to strengthen the central Imperial bureaucracy in a way that could otherwise be targeted against him?

I think that you may have a kernel of a point here -- a lot of the immediate post ROTS to ANH (20 BBY to 0BBY) military buildup by the Empire was probably this -- when you have untold numbers of brand new warships built during the Clone Wars; many of them more powerful than anything that's been seen in quite a while in the SW galaxy, and most of them are only one or two years old when the Clone Wars end....

...Why go and start down the path of being substantially complete with the 25,000 ISD program by the time of ANH, when you can just modernize many of the older Acclaimators and Venators?

There may have also been industrial pork involved -- to bribe the worlds of Kuat and Fondor to go along with the New Order.

[Straha]

So, I don't want to relitigate the canon wars more broadly, but put simply if we don't accept that the canon is made up of what the current version of LucasFilms has put out we're basically in a no mans land of trying to suss out what is and isn't a textual contradiction where perceived contradictions inside the film will, essentially, wreck the ability to advance conversations because we're each dealing with our own headcanons.

If we find contradictions to be a reason to reject films outright then we're in a world where the Prequel Trilogies have to be rejected whole cloth. Obi Wan alone is a nest of contradictions (his relationship with Yoda, his relationship with Anakin, that he never served under Bail Organa as a general, etc.) To say nothing of Anakin, the parentage of Leia, etc. etc. etc.

I agree with much of the hate that the ST gets, and believe me it deserves it and so much more, but we cannot advance conversations like this without accepting the canon as offered. I also think we should be wary of putting this on the ST, as much of the contradictions of the universe come about in the PT and even in the Orig Trig from movie to movie. No one has ever accused George Lucas of engaging in exacting demands for continuity in any project he has touched, and it shows.

A passing thought re: the OP question of "Is Mass Death necessary for the Sith?"

Exegol and the Xyston Star Destroyers (ugh) would indicate that the Sith independently had the technology to create miniaturized planet destroying weapons that could be fitted on cruisers without overwhelming difficulty.

Hyperdrive Skip Jumps
Hyperdrives can be activated within hangar bays
Hyperdrive Ramming

LUKE:
Are you kidding? At the rate they're gaining...

HAN:
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?

If you could always blast into hyperspace from within planets or ship bays....why was there all the rigmarole in A NEW HOPE about that Star Destroyer chasing down the Falcon over Tatooine, when the Falcon could just have punched into hyperspace within Docking Bay 34 on Tatooine, or at 500m above ground level on Tatooine?

I think you ask and answer that in your quote. Han Solo doesn't blast away because he doesn't want to die. The act of engaging in hyperspace jumps from Atmosphere or elsewhere is incredibly dangerous and not something that anyone does if they value their lives. Han Solo values his life and believes that he has multiple other options than risk plowing into a star.

If a minor ship accident can threaten scores of rich, well protected planets due to hyperspace accidents...

... then how come han solo and others are flying shitbuckets in the OT?

If hyperdrives could pose such a danger to galactic society from simple malfunctions, then the shipping industry would be extremely tightly regulated by the authorities, with no room for heavily modified light freighters packing 5 times the engine for their size; IOW, there would be no room for lovable rogues like Han Solo smuggling in a badly maintained hotrodded light freighter.

If a minor car accident can threaten hundreds of people on American highways due to accidents... then how come so many people drive shitbucket cars and trucks in the United States?

The answer can be pretty simple: The tech is ubiquitous, too hard to roll back, and 99.99999% of the time it's done safely without needing to engage in regulation, and the periphery of the galaxy (strongly established as being beyond regulation in both ANH and TPM) makes any attempt at massive restraint of the technology a non-starter.

Beyond that, I find the way the community treats the Millenium Falcon as deeply inconsistent. Is it a bucket of bolts ready to fall apart, or is it a top of the line heavily modified freighter that can operate as a de facto military vehicle and go toe to toe with top of the line military vehicles when called on?

This goes back to your first point re consistency: If inconsistent treatment of materials should result in DQing movies then ROTJ absolutely needs to be tossed out.

But to this point, it's entirely consistent that there could be robust regulations of hyperspace drives (up to and including hard built safeties that prevent the kind of shenanigans you're talking about) and that the Millenium Falcon is up to code in case of random inspection.

or a way to expend massive amounts of resources from the Empire that could otherwise be used to strengthen the central Imperial bureaucracy in a way that could otherwise be targeted against him?

I think that you may have a kernel of a point here -- a lot of the immediate post ROTS to ANH (20 BBY to 0BBY) military buildup by the Empire was probably this -- when you have untold numbers of brand new warships built during the Clone Wars; many of them more powerful than anything that's been seen in quite a while in the SW galaxy, and most of them are only one or two years old when the Clone Wars end....

...Why go and start down the path of being substantially complete with the 25,000 ISD program by the time of ANH, when you can just modernize many of the older Acclaimators and Venators?

There may have also been industrial pork involved -- to bribe the worlds of Kuat and Fondor to go along with the New Order.

So, again, we have a contradiction.

Han Solo makes unambiguously clear that a thousand ships is a mass that is well beyond normal for the Empire and something to be used in an instance of hyperbole, he also uses a thousand ships as the comparison point for blowing up a planet. Jan Dodonna gives a hard quantification that the Death Star has more firepower than "Half the Star Fleet". Ergo, the 25,000 ISDs cannot possibly be canon, much less a construction program that averaged, at the slowest, 1k new star destroyers a year because that would result in a yearly production that would make both Dodonna and Solo's utterances insipid. Ergo, that level of the EU is out.

Obviously, I don't agree but I think this only solution to this is to loop it all in and try to figure out an in-universe explanation for the discrepancies.

More broadly, yeah, "This was done for political reasons" squares a whole lot of circles in universe, and probably resolves the canonical inconsistencies for Imperial competence and bureaucracy in a way that nothing else could. I'm more inclined to this being the destruction of resources and spectacular spending for an ideological purpose than pork because I don't think there are any of the underlying dynamics of pork and bribery involved with the OR/Early Imperial worlds, especially given the total control that Palpatine has to reshape the galaxy after he takes direct control.

[Batman]

Han says 'A thousand ships with more firepower than...' than what? An Execcutor? A torpedo sphere? At best that indicates that it's unusual for the Empire to 'Amass' that many ships OF THAT POWER in one place. It doesn't say anything about how many ships they have.

[Straha]

Han says 'A thousand ships with more firepower than...' than what? An Execcutor? A torpedo sphere? At best that indicates that it's unusual for the Empire to 'Amass' that many ships OF THAT POWER in one place. It doesn't say anything about how many ships they have.

You've missed the point.

I agree that the contradiction is resolvable, indeed must be resolved in universe for our conversation to advance.

That said, it is undeniable that the original quotation (which leads with "The entire starfleet couldn't destroy the planet, it would take a thousand ships...") is heavily implying that the Imperial fleet is much smaller than it is in the EU. This is also buttressed by the Death Star briefing which makes clear that the upper echelons of the Empire think that the Rebel Alliance is a potent military threat to the Empire, and not a bunch of pip squeaks with a tiny fractional amount of military technology.

The Metaverse reason for this tension with the EU is that George Lucas was winging it when he wrote ANH, did not imagine what the actual logistics of a galaxy wide empire would entail (because he was telling a modern day fairy tale for kids,) and was using American level hyperbole (A THOUSAND!). The blowing up of the size of the Empire, and the degree of its control, is developed later by writers filling in the gaps. The story gets revamped and retold in each subsequent generation.

Once we have the texts we have to resolve those contradictions without throwing out the texts, otherwise we can throw out any text we want for risk of contradiction or metanarrative knowledge. So fans go in and smooth out the differences and develop in universe explanations for why Han Solo wasn't wrong but just seems to be wrong.

However, if we're hewing to this process that means the ST cannot be thrown out. We have to resolve the tensions that it introduces with the OT and PT in universe, and not throw a yellow flag and declare "NOPE! TOO FAR!" Especially because everyone's definition of "too far" is unalterably subjective.

[Gandalf]

Han says 'A thousand ships with more firepower than...' than what? An Execcutor? A torpedo sphere? At best that indicates that it's unusual for the Empire to 'Amass' that many ships OF THAT POWER in one place. It doesn't say anything about how many ships they have.

I like to think that Han isn't as bright as he thinks he is, and has no idea what the universe is really like outside of his own little niche.

[GuppyShark]

Using an off-the-cuff remark from a smuggler to determine the size of the Imperial Fleet is exactly the sort of over-reliance on dialogue over evidence this board used to shit on.

[Straha]

Using an off-the-cuff remark from a smuggler to determine the size of the Imperial Fleet is exactly the sort of over-reliance on dialogue over evidence this board used to shit on.

I mean... sure? This is half of the point of my post.

Indeed, it has been one of the main thrusts of my argument here since the third(?) post I made in this thread; that Veers' statements re: planetary shielding on Hoth need to be read with deep skepticism given contextual story and visual evidence and should not be taken as blanket statements of power.

[Gandalf]

A passing thought re: the OP question of "Is Mass Death necessary for the Sith?"

Exegol and the Xyston Star Destroyers (ugh) would indicate that the Sith independently had the technology to create miniaturized planet destroying weapons that could be fitted on cruisers without overwhelming difficulty. Given the remoteness of the planet, the isolation of the staff, and the fact that it was seemingly all mastered by Palpatine (ugh ugh ugh) I think this maybe sells an idea that in-universe it was actually Palpatine and the Sith who developed the planet destroying technology, not Tarkin et al. inside the Empire (or if they did, they were playing around with a partial idea fed to them by Palpatine.)

Having the technology but not using it would run counter to the "This empowers the Sith" narrative, and would also play up an angle of "The Death Star was an unnecessary device/investment." Maybe it was a sort of space potlatch, either a path to keep the Empire busy and visibly reassured by the Emperor or a way to expend massive amounts of resources from the Empire that could otherwise be used to strengthen the central Imperial bureaucracy in a way that could otherwise be targeted against him?

I haven't seen RoS since it came out, but I'll have a go at something.

Perhaps it was also the job of the mighty Imperial Public Service. Following the calamity of the first Death Star's loss, the Emperor declares that he wants a bigger and scarier Death Star, and not much more detail.

In the Department of the Emperor, the risk assessors outlined measures for the new one to prevent what happened last time. The DoE's risk matrices indicated the odds of a successful Rebel attack were minimal, but the potential results catastrophic because this would also represent a loss of the head of state, and those procedures haven't been updated since there was a Chancellor and a line of succession. They also had Exegol sorted out as a risk treatment to recreate their leadership and superweapon capabilities and return to business as usual within one generation. The Emperor could now go on through the universe, knowing he has a shiny new body as needed, Palpatine's most loyal commanders are posted to the ends of the universe away from the levers of power, and the eternal Republic Imperial Public Service remains.

Then the Emperor ballsed it up by leaking the location of the Death Star before it was really ready for combat.

[MKSheppard]

I agree with much of the hate that the ST gets, and believe me it deserves it and so much more, but we cannot advance conversations like this without accepting the canon as offered.

While I was in the shower yesterday, I came up with an idea that can rationalize the "Holdo Manouver" in a way that doesn't break the setting of Star Wars.

Basically, once you cross a certain point of mass (call it some bullshittium type sounding name like the gravitational gradient exponent), operating a hyperdrive at/near/in that mass field becomes lethal to the user -- as in the hyperdrive folds in on itself, collapsing the ship and everyone inside it into...???? Nobody knows, because nobody's come back from that.

The effect of such a hyperdrive inversion on a large mass field nearby (such as a planet), thus may be to increase its rotational speed or precession by a marginal amount.

Thus, hyperdrives become "Self regulating"; making:

1.) OT Behavior of Han having to get off Tatooine and well away from it before he goes into hyperspace

2.) OT/Prequel regulatory environment of hyperdrive travel being common and cheap enough that smugglers can run fly by night outfits.

Work; while also making the Holdo Manouver not break the entire strategic balance of SW; because:

1.) You can't use it against planets because your ship gets folded into itself when you pull that lever).

2.) While you CAN use it against something small and below the gravitational gradient -- like another ship -- it's like a one in a million shot to have your navcomp do the calculations fast enough to line you up with a course through the enemy ship BEFORE they notice you're lining up for a hyperspace jump and manuver enough to make you miss your hyperspace collission.

....then we had Rise of Skywalker; which completely negates that entire idea.



After that.... fuck it I'm out. There's contradictions, and then there's Rise of Skywalker.

[Straha]

Then the Emperor ballsed it up by leaking the location of the Death Star before it was really ready for combat.

Can you imagine the leak inquiry into that?

Every civil service department thinking that someone else has dropped the ball on the most crucial part of their plan? Meeting after acrimonious meeting where all the civil servants smile at each other while saying "Naturally, of course, we treat this matter with the gravest of concerns but clearly this has to start with the Bureau of Ships and Services who would be responsible for the logistical trail of the death star and not the Department of First Contact who clearly only had a minimal relationship with the Ewoks...", going on and on until, finally, they have the dawning realization... that none of them leaked the Death Star. That it could only have come from one place... above...

[Straha]

I agree with much of the hate that the ST gets, and believe me it deserves it and so much more, but we cannot advance conversations like this without accepting the canon as offered.

While I was in the shower yesterday, I came up with an idea that can rationalize the "Holdo Manouver" in a way that doesn't break the setting of Star Wars.

Basically, once you cross a certain point of mass (call it some bullshittium type sounding name like the gravitational gradient exponent), operating a hyperdrive at/near/in that mass field becomes lethal to the user -- as in the hyperdrive folds in on itself, collapsing the ship and everyone inside it into...???? Nobody knows, because nobody's come back from that.

The effect of such a hyperdrive inversion on a large mass field nearby (such as a planet), thus may be to increase its rotational speed or precession by a marginal amount.

Thus, hyperdrives become "Self regulating"; making:

1.) OT Behavior of Han having to get off Tatooine and well away from it before he goes into hyperspace

2.) OT/Prequel regulatory environment of hyperdrive travel being common and cheap enough that smugglers can run fly by night outfits.

I don't think any of this is bad. I'd be down for it. I think another approach, perhaps additive to this, could be BoSS. We know from the EU that there exists a separate Bureau of Ships of Services which is millennia old, predates the Old Republic, maintains hyperspace beacons and hyperspace pathways, and whose ultimate code is so complex that no human can master it, requiring it be outsourced to computers. (Effectively, a GFFA version of Comstar.) Their control is absolute, opaque, and ubiquitous but also undiscriminating when it comes to non-BoSS matters, effectively giving anyone who will abide by their rules access to hyperspace. Also, importantly, the staff behind SOLO referenced wookiepedia and the EU texts, indicating that significant elements of the Legends EU may still be active in the canon. These regulations requiring on-board safeties, computer checks, and scanner interface would explain everything very neatly.

- For Han and Tatooine, it would make perfect sense that he cannot punch out until the Falcon's computer and BoSS code approve his route. He makes reference to not wanting to jump into a planet, but that could be handled by computer safety checks running ahead of time forcing him to delay. Given that this is basically part of the code of the engine (similar to computer mapping of throttle control on modern cars) and a naturalized part of interstellar travel going back millenia, it would make no sense for him to treat it as anything other than a completely natural part of the process of interstellar travel.

- For the Holdo's suicide run it's doubly explainable. In the first place, while a smuggler or the average shipping company might not have the capacity to reprogram the hyperspace computer an efficient military operation could, probably, have the expertise on hand to override the controls and "JUST MAKE IT GO" by McGuyvering the system. The reason why no one but the resistance would do it is because to do so would result in BoSS effectively engaging in a total interdiction of your access to hyperspace if they catch you, essentially turning you into a stranded galactic pariah after the fact. According to the old Canon BoSS intervention stopped at least two civil wars dead in their tracks, and I imagine the mere threat of it would loom over anyone even thinking of fucking with their rules. So, the risks of the Holdo maneuver would not make sense for anyone except people caught in a galactic struggle of life or death, because loss of access to hyperspace would turn any victory into crushing, total, defeat. The naturalization of these rules and controls would also explain why most people never even thought about it before, these are literally the received wisdom of thousands of years of prior experience (hence why Holdo is seen as a innovative rule breaker.)

- For the Rise of Skywalker. Alright, this is a stretch but bear with me for a moment. One of the things we know from the old canon is that there's a rating system for hyperdrives, but that it also never made any sense metanarratively. Lower was better, it had a very limited range (effectively .5 to 3, IIRC), and it seemingly didn't easily correlate to any linear understanding of speed. We also know that the Millenium Falcon, a fly by night freighter, was .5 which makes it extremely fast despite being slower than Star Destroyers which were faster in sub-space but slower in hyperspace. I will add to this that we know that when Han boasts about his skills to Luke and Obi Wan he claims to have done the Kessel Run in "Less than 12 Parsecs" which is not a measure of speed but distance.

So, to recap real quick:
- Ships use a decreasing ranking system for speed, which makes no sense if technology is improving because working down towards zero gives engine ratings a very finite design.
- Bigger faster ships with massive engines go slower in hyperspace than smaller, slower, cheaper ships.
- Distance is considered to be a measure of speed.

What if the speed rating from the old EU isn't a question of speed, but a question of BoSS certification of how fast a ship can go safely, probably built around a ratio of size to sensors. The more powerful and minute the ship's sensors, the faster it can be trusted to go. The smaller the ship, the less likely to hit things, ergo the faster it can go. This would explain why the Falcon, a tiny ship with a very advanced sensor array and a powerful computer, could go as fast as it did, and it would also explain that the power of the ship is its ability to calculate sensors and course on the fly incredibly fast, and not necessarily its engines. Given what we see the Falcon do in Rise of Skywalker I think we can then postulate that hyperspace travel could theoretically be almost infinitely fast, but that it is artificially slowed down by BoSS safety protocols and pilot's senses of self-preservation.

In the world of Rise of Skywalker, then, it would be reasonable to postulate that after Holdo has burned the BoSS bridge and Palpatine's return with the threat of thousands of Star Destroyers each more powerful than the Death Star that Poe had the safeties ripped out of the Falcon letting him 'lightspeed skip' following basic trajectories of where the planets were and hoping the Falcon would stop in time. It would explain the absolute terror by the slug guy and Chewie, why nobody did it before (or after), and why Poe was so blase about "if we survive" given that what he's doing is basically going 400MPH down main street and hoping for the best.


I'm not in love with this explanation, but I think it actually explains pretty much everything without fucking up the rest of the canon.

[Gandalf]

Then the Emperor ballsed it up by leaking the location of the Death Star before it was really ready for combat.

Can you imagine the leak inquiry into that?

Every civil service department thinking that someone else has dropped the ball on the most crucial part of their plan? Meeting after acrimonious meeting where all the civil servants smile at each other while saying "Naturally, of course, we treat this matter with the gravest of concerns but clearly this has to start with the Bureau of Ships and Services who would be responsible for the logistical trail of the death star and not the Department of First Contact who clearly only had a minimal relationship with the Ewoks...", going on and on until, finally, they have the dawning realization... that none of them leaked the Death Star. That it could only have come from one place... above...

That would be the best film ever, especially as the New Republic's Office of the Chief Auditor closes in on the Department of the Emperor, and the Emperor's cronies who no longer have that top cover to protect themselves.

That's how you get a Star Wars film directed by Armando Ianucci.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Then the Emperor ballsed it up by leaking the location of the Death Star before it was really ready for combat.

Can you imagine the leak inquiry into that?

Every civil service department thinking that someone else has dropped the ball on the most crucial part of their plan? Meeting after acrimonious meeting where all the civil servants smile at each other while saying "Naturally, of course, we treat this matter with the gravest of concerns but clearly this has to start with the Bureau of Ships and Services who would be responsible for the logistical trail of the death star and not the Department of First Contact who clearly only had a minimal relationship with the Ewoks...", going on and on until, finally, they have the dawning realization... that none of them leaked the Death Star. That it could only have come from one place... above...

That would be the best film ever, especially as the New Republic's Office of the Chief Auditor closes in on the Department of the Emperor, and the Emperor's cronies who no longer have that top cover to protect themselves.

That's how you get a Star Wars film directed by Armando Ianucci.

I would watch the hell out of that. A SW version of "The Death of Stalin?"

I demand this be made at once. And I need Peter Capaldi to play Sate Pestage.

[MKSheppard]

I think another approach, perhaps additive to this, could be BoSS. We know from the EU that there exists a separate Bureau of Ships of Services which is millennia old, predates the Old Republic, maintains hyperspace beacons and hyperspace pathways, and whose ultimate code is so complex that no human can master it, requiring it be outsourced to computers. (Effectively, a GFFA version of Comstar.) Their control is absolute, opaque, and ubiquitous but also undiscriminating when it comes to non-BoSS matters, effectively giving anyone who will abide by their rules access to hyperspace. Also, importantly, the staff behind SOLO referenced wookiepedia and the EU texts, indicating that significant elements of the Legends EU may still be active in the canon. These regulations requiring on-board safeties, computer checks, and scanner interface would explain everything very neatly.

I actually never heard of BOSS, and went and checked up on Wookipedia; and it turns out it was introduced by Zahn in Vision of the Future back in 1998; which explains why I didn't -- it was introduced just as WEG was dying; so didn't spread as far as it could've.

Given that this is basically part of the code of the engine (similar to computer mapping of throttle control on modern cars) and a naturalized part of interstellar travel going back millenia, it would make no sense for him to treat it as anything other than a completely natural part of the process of interstellar travel.

The problem with that is as long as someone has primary access to it; it won't take long for some entrepreneur or haxxor to hack it.

So, the risks of the Holdo maneuver would not make sense for anyone except people caught in a galactic struggle of life or death, because loss of access to hyperspace would turn any victory into crushing, total, defeat. The naturalization of these rules and controls would also explain why most people never even thought about it before, these are literally the received wisdom of thousands of years of prior experience (hence why Holdo is seen as a innovative rule breaker.)

So why didn't they Holdo the first Death Star? It's literally "stop Death Star now over Yavin or else the rebellion is pretty much extinct."

It's why I lean towards Hyperdrives being self-regulating, rather than relying on an external source (aka BOSS), because if BOSS keeps people from doing the nasty with Hyperdrives as weapons; why didn't Palpatine order the weaponisation of Hyperdrives instead of making the Death Star(s)? I mean, he's planning to blow up at least one major world with the Death Star, and has near total control over the Imperial Bureaucracy; so BOSS would be negotiable obstacle to him.

One of the things we know from the old canon is that there's a rating system for hyperdrives, but that it also never made any sense metanarratively. Lower was better, it had a very limited range (effectively .5 to 3, IIRC), and it seemingly didn't easily correlate to any linear understanding of speed. We also know that the Millenium Falcon, a fly by night freighter, was .5 which makes it extremely fast despite being slower than Star Destroyers which were faster in sub-space but slower in hyperspace.

It goes back to WEG trying to make sense of Han's boast in ANH:

[Luke sees the Millennium Falcon for the first time]

Luke Skywalker: What a piece of junk!

Han Solo: She'll make point five past lightspeed. She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid. I've added some special modifications myself. But we're a little rushed, so if you'll just get onboard, we'll get outta here.

[Straha]

Given that this is basically part of the code of the engine (similar to computer mapping of throttle control on modern cars) and a naturalized part of interstellar travel going back millenia, it would make no sense for him to treat it as anything other than a completely natural part of the process of interstellar travel.

The problem with that is as long as someone has primary access to it; it won't take long for some entrepreneur or haxxor to hack it.

So, firstly I think that the code to do this is probably immensely complex. In a world where they've created consciousness in droid brains, and the BoSS regulations are so vast that they need dedicated computers and droids to hack compliance it may just not be practical to hack. Secondly, if the controls are safety ones that prevent people from smashing into planets and killing themselves, why fuck around with it? I'm pretty sure that I could get a mechanic to hack my brakes so that they look road legal but only apply 10% of the braking pressure that they're supposed to, but why would I? Finally, if the penalty for getting caught is "BANNED FROM EVER GOING INTO HYPERSPACE AGAIN" I think the deterrent may very well outweigh any negligible benefit of even trying to fuck with the hyperdrive.

So, the risks of the Holdo maneuver would not make sense for anyone except people caught in a galactic struggle of life or death, because loss of access to hyperspace would turn any victory into crushing, total, defeat. The naturalization of these rules and controls would also explain why most people never even thought about it before, these are literally the received wisdom of thousands of years of prior experience (hence why Holdo is seen as a innovative rule breaker.)

So why didn't they Holdo the first Death Star? It's literally "stop Death Star now over Yavin or else the rebellion is pretty much extinct."

The Death Star isn't a game over. The Death Star is, supposedly, a population control mechanism which means if it's "working" (see above for my thoughts on this) it's not being used, and as long as it exists the Rebellion can try and blow it up, especially when they know the Death Star's glaring, fatal, weakness.

And what we know in universe is that the last time a civil war broke BoSS rules BoSS stopped one side from being able to travel FTL. If the Rebellion ends the Death Star but can no longer go into hyperspace they have ultimately defeated themselves more utterly than the Empire ever could.

It's why I lean towards Hyperdrives being self-regulating, rather than relying on an external source (aka BOSS), because if BOSS keeps people from doing the nasty with Hyperdrives as weapons; why didn't Palpatine order the weaponisation of Hyperdrives instead of making the Death Star(s)? I mean, he's planning to blow up at least one major world with the Death Star, and has near total control over the Imperial Bureaucracy; so BOSS would be negotiable obstacle to him.

I think it's both. Hyperdrives are self-regulating with massive safeties built into the system in order to meet BoSS specs.

As for why BoSS fits the bill here, in the old canon it was external to the Empire. It was a long running civil service organization that had no master other than itself, which loops this into the other conversation happening here. The Empire cannot fuck with them because to do so imperils their ability to engage in hyperspace and the entire economic functioning of the Empire. To use the Death Star as a comparison, BoSS's threat to the Empire can be as simple as "If you fuck with us we'll turn off the hyperspace beacons going to Coruscant and let everyone starve, and because the tech and regulations are ours any attempt to undo this will take too long and be too late. And, really, all we want you to do is follow a set of very simple, very understandable, and not at all cumbersome rules that you already follow anyway."

Finally, I think this goes back to what the Death Star was designed for. In universe it's not an effective weapon of mass destruction, population control, or fleet battle. To ask "Well, if this possible weapon is on the cards, why didn't they design the Death Star to include it?" is like asking why minivans don't have turbochargers and rear wing spoilers, because even if that technology exists it doesn't fit the purpose here. I think it's designed to be Palpy's joyride, but it could also be a de facto sith temple, as you postulate, and the answer wouldn't change.

One of the things we know from the old canon is that there's a rating system for hyperdrives, but that it also never made any sense metanarratively. Lower was better, it had a very limited range (effectively .5 to 3, IIRC), and it seemingly didn't easily correlate to any linear understanding of speed. We also know that the Millenium Falcon, a fly by night freighter, was .5 which makes it extremely fast despite being slower than Star Destroyers which were faster in sub-space but slower in hyperspace.

It goes back to WEG trying to make sense of Han's boast in ANH: >snip<

I know where the quote comes from and why the ranking system exists, but as a speed ranking system it's dumb beyond belief. "As you go faster we use lower numbers" only makes sense if you already know what the fastest possible speed is. Which means the system doesn't make sense if hyperspace is iteratively developing over time or if the fastest speed isn't attainable. This is why a "This represents a threshold above infinite speed that you can go based on sensors and safety checks" system makes a lot of sense to me, especially in a world where Han's biggest boast is that he can plot a super efficient chart that has him travel the least distance.

This would also, I note, make him a sort of Star Wars universe Ian Malcolm math nerd, and I love that idea.

[bilateralrope]

And what we know in universe is that the last time a civil war broke BoSS rules BoSS stopped one side from being able to travel FTL. If the Rebellion ends the Death Star but can no longer go into hyperspace they have ultimately defeated themselves more utterly than the Empire ever could.

How exactly does BoSS stop one side going into Hyperspace ?

If they rely on sending a signal to the ships belonging to whatever faction they want blocked from Hyperspace, they first have to find some way to figure out which ships belong to the Rebellion. Planetary governments might keep a registry of ships they control and let BoSS have access to it. But I doubt the Rebellion would share their list, even if they have one.

Also, an organisation with that much power is going to be targeted for infiltration and subversion by any intelligence agency that thinks they could pull it off. Maybe the Empire never managed to infiltrate it enough to take over, but the New Republic managed to get in far enough to learn how to override the safeties and pass that information on. Gambling that, if the safeties are ever bypassed in a way that BoSS learns about, the combination of the NR denying that it was their forces that did it and anyone within BoSS sympathetic to the NR will stop them killing NR hyperdrives.

[Straha]

And what we know in universe is that the last time a civil war broke BoSS rules BoSS stopped one side from being able to travel FTL. If the Rebellion ends the Death Star but can no longer go into hyperspace they have ultimately defeated themselves more utterly than the Empire ever could.

How exactly does BoSS stop one side going into Hyperspace ?

I think by cutting off access to hyperspace beacons? I do not know/remember. My recollection of BoSS is weak.

I will add that canonically they are considered so strong that neither the OR or the Empire tried to assimilate them (in the old EU.)

If they rely on sending a signal to the ships belonging to whatever faction they want blocked from Hyperspace, they first have to find some way to figure out which ships belong to the Rebellion. Planetary governments might keep a registry of ships they control and let BoSS have access to it. But I doubt the Rebellion would share their list, even if they have one.

Let's say you're right for sake of argument. I still think the risk far outweighs the reward, with either Death Star. For the first the Rebellion had, in hand, the Death Star's Achilles Heel and knew it could blow it up in a concerted operation, indeed they were able to with a skin of their teeth last minute desperation job. The second one they thought they caught under construction, non-operational, and deeply vulnerable, and they were right on two out of the three. Neither calls for doing something that imperils the ability of every X-Wing to go into hyperspace.

On top of that, again, I disagree with the premise that the existence of the Death Star is a game over for the rebellion. To go back, it is simply not an effective tool in any sense (weapon, population control, blockader, etc.) other than blowing up particular planets, which is ultimately a losing proposition for the Empire in the first place.

Also, an organisation with that much power is going to be targeted for infiltration and subversion by any intelligence agency that thinks they could pull it off. Maybe the Empire never managed to infiltrate it enough to take over, but the New Republic managed to get in far enough to learn how to override the safeties and pass that information on. Gambling that, if the safeties are ever bypassed in a way that BoSS learns about, the combination of the NR denying that it was their forces that did it and anyone within BoSS sympathetic to the NR will stop them killing NR hyperdrives.

That could be. Again, I think it comes back to TRoS being basically apocalyptically bad. Sidious has returned, dark magic can potentially control the universe, and even in the best case scenario he has no interest in respecting the rules of warfare, and in a world where he has amassed a slew of Star Destroyers that can blow up planets and has no reason to either respect the life on the planets or to expect legitimacy if he conquers them (coupled with the SPACE WIZARD powers) basically everyone is going to die. Probably a lot easier to explain that to an appeal board at BoSS than Kamikazi'ing the Death Star.

[Straha]

Re: Hoth.

I just rewatched the beginning of ESB. Two interesting notes:

First, Vader clearly frames their finding of Hoth as an attempt to capture Skywalker. On being shown the shield generator he says:

"That is the system, and I am sure Skywalker is with them. Set your course for the Hoth system. General Veers, prepare your men."

Mass destructive bombardment was never part of the mission remit from the Imperial side, he is there to get his son and put him in timeout.

Second, General Rieekan reacts as if a bombardment is coming and is a real threat. When he's told of the arrival of the Imperial fleet his orders are:

"Reroute all power to the energy shield, we gotta hold them until the transports are away." The fact that he thinks the shield A. needs to be reinforced and is not good enough to repel the attack by itself and B. its collapse under attack is operating under a time condition, indicates that the shields are not nearly strong enough for any sort of hypothetical turtling strategy.



I think this puts paid to any idea that planetary shields offer some sort of panacea to orbital bombardment.

[Batman]

There 's so many unknowns there for that to be meaningless. Was that a full-on planetary shield (unlikely as the Empire was able to land a short distance away)? Maybe not all shields are created equal? This was something the rebels managed to find and were able to run with whatever resources they managed to scrounge together. That's not the same as a well-maintaIned full-on core worlds quality shield system.