Starkiller Base vs...4th Empire planetoid!

[Q99]

Didn't 4th Imperium stuff fight at FTL, or am I thinking of something else? Staying mobile should prevent them from being successfully targeted.

Not that I can recall; they can use the Enchanach (? I can't remember the spelling) Drive for tactical manoeuvres, but I can't recall any specific examples of 4th Imperium or 4th Empire actually fighting while at FTL.

Still, tactical maneuvers. "Stay at FTL til in Starkiller's system, then get behind it," seems a sure win.

[Simon_Jester]

Unless the Base goes to hyperspace itself while you're maneuvering, in which case you've lost track of it and are potentially screwed since it can use 'shoot and scoot' tactics to pot key worlds of yours from massively interstellar distances.

As noted, Star Wars hyperdrive is a lot more sophisticated in terms of speed (if nothing else) than Empire/Imperium FTL drives.

[dragon]

Didn't 4th Imperium stuff fight at FTL, or am I thinking of something else? Staying mobile should prevent them from being successfully targeted.

Not that I can recall; they can use the Enchanach (? I can't remember the spelling) Drive for tactical manoeuvres, but I can't recall any specific examples of 4th Imperium or 4th Empire actually fighting while at FTL.

The Imperium had no fighting at FTL other than FTL hyperspace missiles.
Stupid question since the Starkiller Base has one weapon on one side of the planet whats to prevent the planetoid from coming in from the other side popping of a hyperspace missile from the edge of the system then moving before the planet has a chance to turn and fire.

[Me2005]

Didn't 4th Imperium stuff fight at FTL, or am I thinking of something else? Staying mobile should prevent them from being successfully targeted.

They don't need to fight at FTL to be hard to target - SKB is built for firing on planets that can't move out of their orbit. Since the Planetoid is not only fast, but can blink in and out of FTL while in combat I think we can safely assume they wouldn't even be able to hit the Planetoid unless it stayed perfectly still.

Actually, that whole thing is a super-questionable design. The DS/DSII had massive surface batteries and presumably could've swatted any fleet that engaged it just by virtue of being immune to any weapon in that fleet. Shoot, we see the DSII basically ram the largest ship in the galaxy (at the time) and it doesn't even scratch the paint.

But a planet? That doesn't seem even completely colonized? I guess it's got a huge shield (the MF needed to hyperjump in the atmosphere after all), but it still seems.. Less impressive. I don't know, maybe a different kind of engagement would have made it seem tougher, but the rebels didn't seem to have any trouble with their fighters (other than from TIEs) getting close once they got the shield down.

So... Yeah. Long story short: Planetoid hyper-missiles land inside the SKB shield and blow up all the important stuff; if SKB even gets a shot off Planetoid hypers out of the way, game over.

[Q99]

They don't need to fight at FTL to be hard to target - SKB is built for firing on planets that can't move out of their orbit. Since the Planetoid is not only fast, but can blink in and out of FTL while in combat I think we can safely assume they wouldn't even be able to hit the Planetoid unless it stayed perfectly still.

Actually, that whole thing is a super-questionable design. The DS/DSII had massive surface batteries and presumably could've swatted any fleet that engaged it just by virtue of being immune to any weapon in that fleet. Shoot, we see the DSII basically ram the largest ship in the galaxy (at the time) and it doesn't even scratch the paint.

But a planet? That doesn't seem even completely colonized? I guess it's got a huge shield (the MF needed to hyperjump in the atmosphere after all), but it still seems.. Less impressive. I don't know, maybe a different kind of engagement would have made it seem tougher, but the rebels didn't seem to have any trouble with their fighters (other than from TIEs) getting close once they got the shield down.

So... Yeah. Long story short: Planetoid hyper-missiles land inside the SKB shield and blow up all the important stuff; if SKB even gets a shot off Planetoid hypers out of the way, game over.

Another thing about it is it apparently had a limited number of shots before the sun couldn't power it any more.

So basically it's a 'kill multiple enemy systems, then just be a military base at best,' weapon. Starting with the system with the bulk of the enemy fleet.

And in it's defense, the weakness was a specific part, heavily armored, did require some internal explosives too, and for the above reasons it isn't designed for indefinite use. Unlike the Death Star, which is an indefinitely reusable 'nuke,' SK-B is an un-interceptable two-use nuke.

[Esquire]

Per star. Of which there are many billions of completely unimportant ones in the galaxy to use as ammunition.

[Batman]

Unless it can move to another system and use another sun as a power source of course.

[Simon_Jester]

Actually, that whole thing is a super-questionable design. The DS/DSII had massive surface batteries and presumably could've swatted any fleet that engaged it just by virtue of being immune to any weapon in that fleet. Shoot, we see the DSII basically ram the largest ship in the galaxy (at the time) and it doesn't even scratch the paint.

I seem to remember a massive fireball erupting from the surface, but yes, the Death Stars have tremendous resistance to damage from normal ship attacks.

But a planet? That doesn't seem even completely colonized? I guess it's got a huge shield (the MF needed to hyperjump in the atmosphere after all), but it still seems.. Less impressive. I don't know, maybe a different kind of engagement would have made it seem tougher, but the rebels didn't seem to have any trouble with their fighters (other than from TIEs) getting close once they got the shield down.

I'd say that in terms of being effective against a fighter attack, Starkiller Base's defenses compare pretty well against the first Death Star's, if only because the guys commanding it were smart enough to actually launch their TIEs.

As you mention, Starkiller Base's shields were taken out of the picture before the battle even began, and might well have done a lot to increase the base's resistance to attack.

That said, I think it's key to understand that given its intended strategic role, Starkiller Base doesn't need massive defenses to take on fleets of conventional warships. Its strongest defense is being about to destroy any target in the galaxy, without being located and attacked at all. It's like a ballistic missile submarine that can manufacture more of its own nuclear missiles. Sure, it can't sink a carrier battlegroup in a 'fair fight.' But it doesn't need to be able to sink enemy aircraft carriers to be massively, apocalpytically dangerous.

So... Yeah. Long story short: Planetoid hyper-missiles land inside the SKB shield and blow up all the important stuff; if SKB even gets a shot off Planetoid hypers out of the way, game over.

Honestly yeah, good chance of this happening, unless Starkiller Base goes into hyperspace first. If they get away into hyperspace then the Imperium planetoid will never see them again, because Star Wars hyperdrive is a lot faster.

[NecronLord]

Starkiller Base's defenses compare pretty well against the first Death Star's, if only because the guys commanding it were smart enough to actually launch their TIEs.

Nope.

There are TIE fighters sitting in rows on the ground when the base begins to blow up, when the guys are talking about Hux having abandoned his post. Hux had made Tarkin's error, yet again.

And there were simply far less Resistance fighters than rebel fighters attacking the Death Star, so the attacks were not comparable. It's easier to fight two squadrons than three. If the same number of X-wings had been shot down over the Starkiller as had been over the Death Star, the Resistance would have had a negative number of X-wings.

[Simon_Jester]

Had forgotten the scene of TIEs blowing up on the pad.

What I will observe is this. The Death Star's defense command launched no fighters; it took Vader's personal intervention to get even a squadron or so out into space. Starkiller Base's defense command launched some of their fighters.

Now, did they launch only a tiny fraction of their fighters? Or did they launch the majority of what was available? It bears remembering that just because we see a fighter on a pad, it doesn't mean that the fighter is ready for launch. A surprise attack can easily catch the defenders with fighters that are sitting around in the middle of a maintenance cycle with their engines partially dismantled or something.

Do we have clear evidence of roughly what percentage of their overall fighter defense the Base actually scrambled?

...

Now, that said, when I said "compare pretty well" I should have picked different words. It's not true to say Starkiller Base had a stronger defense (at least, assuming that the Resistance's X-Wings don't have vastly better performance than the ones used in Episode IV). I shouldn't have said or even implied that.

At the same time, Starkiller Base's defenses accomplished something at least comparable to what the Death Star's did: shooting down a large fraction of a double-digit fighter raid. The Death Star's defenses accomplished more- but the Death Star wasn't suffering from major sabotage before the enemy had arrived. Moreover, the Death Star was designed to sail into striking range of enemy fleets and resist their attack.

The Death Star is like a tank, designed to give and take fire and to annihilate things relatively close to itself. Starkiller Base is like a self-propelled artillery gun, designed to annihilate the enemy from so far away that they never even see what just killed them. The two may look superficially similar but they're designed for different missions and one cannot easily be judged by the standards of the other. Given that Starkiller Base has less need of a tight defense, and suffered major sabotage before the attack began, I'd say they were doing pretty well.

[eyl]

Didn't 4th Imperium stuff fight at FTL, or am I thinking of something else? Staying mobile should prevent them from being successfully targeted.

Not that I can recall; they can use the Enchanach (? I can't remember the spelling) Drive for tactical manoeuvres, but I can't recall any specific examples of 4th Imperium or 4th Empire actually fighting while at FTL.

Given planetoid reaction times, I don't see why they can't, at least in principle.. The Enchanach drive is basically a FTL system which moves the ship in short jumps; there shouldn't be any reason they can't get off a shot during the times they're in realspace.

In practise they'd probably be limited to beam weapons and possibly internally launched hypermissiles (which is counter to 4th Imperium and presumably 4th Empire doctrine and they may not be equipped for it), as otherwise the Enchanach drive will affect and likely destroy the missiles before they get clear when it jumps again.

[Q99]

There are TIE fighters sitting in rows on the ground when the base begins to blow up, when the guys are talking about Hux having abandoned his post. Hux had made Tarkin's error, yet again.

And there were simply far less Resistance fighters than rebel fighters attacking the Death Star, so the attacks were not comparable. It's easier to fight two squadrons than three. If the same number of X-wings had been shot down over the Starkiller as had been over the Death Star, the Resistance would have had a negative number of X-wings.

I'm pretty sure there's a lot of fighters we didn't seen. Poe talked about heavy casualties, heavier than we observe.

The TIEs did eliminate the majority of Resistance fighters.

And, frankly, if there were just a few TIE squadrons, Poe could kill them all ^^

Per star. Of which there are many billions of completely unimportant ones in the galaxy to use as ammunition.

Unless it can move to another system and use another sun as a power source of course.

Which, we don't know if it can. I don't think there's an indication of it, and it doesn't have to move to do it's attack job.