Next generation Imperial weapons

[Admiral Bravo]

Lets pretend the Empire crushes the Rebels at Endor. The Empire conquers the Federation and the rest of the Milky Way galaxy, via a wormhole, and what technology that is useful is incorperated in the military. The Empire then starts to conquer the galaxies around it, only problem is that scouts have run into not only galaxies that are at the same tech level as they are, but there are also other powers that are around par with the Empire and have pretty much the same goals. The Emperor, not minding the compition as it will let the Empire show off its toys, orders Imperial engineers to develop the next generation of starships, weapons, vechicles, superweapons, etc in order to crush any threats as well as to persuade other empires to join the Empire. What kinds of weapons of war/gadgets would the Empire develop to fight what would esentially be a mirror or several mirror versions of itself?

[wolveraptor]

do they already have anti-matter bombs? because we're already creating anti-matter in labs. at that point in the future, with their near-infinite resources and advanced technology, anti-matter bombs would render weapons like the Death Star obsolete. all they'd have to do is plant an insignificant amount of anti-matter on any planet with some covert stealth ship, then sit back and watch the fireworks.

[Enola Straight]

Phase Cloaks; Don't have to rely so heavily on a navicomputer to calculate a safe course through hyperspace, since collisions with mass shadows are now a moot point.

Holodecks for safe training exercises.

Replicators and transporters for recycling and instant cargo transfer.

Genesis torpedo for instant terraforming (use superior Imperial tech to get around the protomatter glitch).

Study Transwarp and Quantum Slipstream to gain new insights into hyperdrive theory.

Study "Galactic Barrier" and how it affects certain individuals in the manifestation of metaphysical powers...a.k.a. "instant" Jedi/Sith.

Study time travel and propose incursions into the past to rewrite history and make the galaxy more Imperial freindly.

[Questor]

Phase Cloaks; Don't have to rely so heavily on a navicomputer to calculate a safe course through hyperspace, since collisions with mass shadows are now a moot point.

Holodecks for safe training exercises.

Replicators and transporters for recycling and instant cargo transfer.

Genesis torpedo for instant terraforming (use superior Imperial tech to get around the protomatter glitch).

Study Transwarp and Quantum Slipstream to gain new insights into hyperdrive theory.

Study "Galactic Barrier" and how it affects certain individuals in the manifestation of metaphysical powers...a.k.a. "instant" Jedi/Sith.

Study time travel and propose incursions into the past to rewrite history and make the galaxy more Imperial freindly.

I hope you're joking.

If you arn't, well, I'm too tired to do anything but warn you that you'd better have a thick skin.

[Stark]

Did someone just say 'minute quantities of antimatter' and 'destroy planet'? Oh dear... oh deary dear.

Wouldn't any Imperial advancement go in the culture direction (excusing Palpatines Operation 'EAT THE GALAXY' of course)

[Praxis]

do they already have anti-matter bombs? because we're already creating anti-matter in labs. at that point in the future, with their near-infinite resources and advanced technology, anti-matter bombs would render weapons like the Death Star obsolete. all they'd have to do is plant an insignificant amount of anti-matter on any planet with some covert stealth ship, then sit back and watch the fireworks.

Have you even read the main site?



Jeez. The Death Star makes antimatter look like firecrackers. You'd have to turn the entire mass of the Death Star into antimatter to match the level of firepower it turned out, and since it still had plenty of power to demolish a few more planets after destroying Alderaan, the Empire therefore can generate FAR more power than anti-matter.

"Insignificant amount of anti-matter on any planet"? Rofl. Learn some science.

The Empire is far beyond antimatter. An antimatter bomb would be older technology to them.

[Troodon]

do they already have anti-matter bombs? because we're already creating anti-matter in labs. at that point in the future, with their near-infinite resources and advanced technology, anti-matter bombs would render weapons like the Death Star obsolete. all they'd have to do is plant an insignificant amount of anti-matter on any planet with some covert stealth ship, then sit back and watch the fireworks.

Total matter-to-energy conversion yields around 9E16 Joules per kilogram. The minimum energy to scatter an Earthlike planet's mass is around 2.2E32 Joules. Unless I've made a mistake somewhere, you'd need at least five trillion tons of antimatter for the job, and realisticly a lot more than that.

[Sharpshooter]

Continuing research on superlaser technology, I suppose that the Empire would try to impliment it in some way so as to create a Superlaser Gunship of sorts, which might work well in the area of killing hardened capital ships, leaving the weak ones free to be preyed upon by the guns of the Victory and Imperial Star Destroyers. It also might work well for large-scale orbital bombardment, if they could find a way to make the laser dispurse its energy upon contact with a structure as opposed to forcing it to absorb the energy: rather than waste a city with hundreds upon hundreds of turbolaser shots, which would take precious minutes, a ten-second bombardment of a single shot could do the job. A perfect cloaking device would also probably be a major priority, as well as fighter development and the construction of bigger and better warships, and developing a system to transport bombs, droids, and other things aboard enemy ships could yield some interesting results, followed by research into countering such a tactic if it's ever used against them. Working on Phase Cloak technology, as was suggested above, would be even better, and not simply for stealth: find a way to get the cloak and the hyperdrive to operate, and it's possible that mass shadows won't cause any problems whatsoever, signifigantly cutting down transit times.

Something along the lines of a World Devestator built on the frame of an even-larger Death Star would likely be something to appear, and could probably be used both as a production facility and as a terror weapon: you find a resisting planet with a nice, small moon or a set of space-borne facilities, over-ride local communications to give the people a warning, then let them watch in horror as the entire satellite or shipyard network is devoured and used to produce the ships of an occupation force.

Infantry armor and weapons would probably get a nice boost as well, as the Emperor realizes he can no longer wage war by mere numbers alone. Armor might get a nice boost in communications and visual capabilities, as well as some improvement to the armor's containment system (better filtration, ability to work longer when sealed, etc) and some passive strength augmentation (there's supposedly a non-powered system being developed by the military that uses some kind of shape-reactive material to enable soldiers to life two, three, or more times their normal amount), and perhaps something akin to an augmented shield system of some sort. Weapons would probably remain generally the same, though some Federation technology might be used to suppliment them - things like a miniature phaser for cutting and welding materials, the tricorner for various scans, and a scaled-down version of that tool that's used for low-level injuries, such as gashes and broken bones.

I suppose they'd also make good direct use of some Federation technology, such as an improved holographics system for communication (Instead of force-choking a captain in another ship, Vader could just step over to his hologram and do it by hand for extra effect) and training, and could even try marketting the system for the civilian populace: it'd be a nice source of income to fund the conquoring effort, especially when offered to the wealthy and powerful, and would also allow for the Empire to ease possible distress in the population. Medical equipment would be an extensive help, as organs that seem often impossible to replace in the Wars-verse - eyes, vocal cords, etcetera - could be developed and surgically implanted to restore abilities, and injuries that might require prosthetics or amputation could also be treated.

Outside of that, I suppose it's just the basic search for a way to get a bigger bang out of your buck.

By the way: what is it about anti-matter that instantly makes people think it's the big, bad weapon that'll take care of anything you want it to? Another brainbug?

[Stofsk]

By the way: what is it about anti-matter that instantly makes people think it's the big, bad weapon that'll take care of anything you want it to? Another brainbug?

There's nothing wrong with antimatter being used as a weapon. Are you saying there is?

Or is it the overexaggeration of antimatter bombs that annoy you? They annoy me too. I like it when antimatter bombs are little more than bigger nukes. When they start saying "OMG it will destroy everything in a parsec any direction from here!" that's when I think the brainbug has hit the cerebellum and started laying eggs.

[Sharpshooter]

There's nothing wrong with antimatter being used as a weapon. Are you saying there is?

Nope: in the right circumstances and proportions, such as charges to breach ship hulls and missiles to blow up starships, it's as fine a weapon as any. When one says that an "insignifigant" amount of the stuff could do what took a battlestation more than a hundred kilometers wide, things are getting out of perspective.

Or is it the overexaggeration of antimatter bombs that annoy you? They annoy me too. I like it when antimatter bombs are little more than bigger nukes. When they start saying "OMG it will destroy everything in a parsec any direction from here!" that's when I think the brainbug has hit the cerebellum and started laying eggs.

Precisely.

[Solauren]

Let's see

What we know the MAW Installation was working on

Qauntum Armor (on all starships)

Resonator (aka Suncrusher) torpedoes. If one of those can eat 20% of the prototype Death Star up and only stopped cause it ran out of mass, imagine those against enemy starships that were assembled.

World Devestators. I once did the math, and if I was right, 1 World Devestator dropped of in a large Gas Giant like Jupiter, with a large cloning facility nearby (i.e Bespin, but turning out clones at the rate Thrawn was), you could have a massive, massive fleet, by even Star Wars standards, withing a few years.

The Galaxy Gun.

Various projects the rebels defeated would be resurrected
specifically:
the Ion Ring Ship (permanently alter the climate on a target planet to whatever you want.). Modify it to fire in a beam/pulse, and disable enemy fleets with it
Darktroopers would be redeveloped. Phase 3 Darktroopers are absolute monsters.

Biological weapons galore. (i.e Crimson Forever)

Project Starscream: the Star wars version the of the 'T-Virus' from Resident Evil (but without the zombie-brains depending on how long you where dead), devices that cause psychic trauma, mutant super-soldiers, bio-weapons that turn you into brown-blobs

Omega Frost: why blow up a planet or enemy fleet when you can freeze it solid?

Tie Phantoms

Hybrid Tie-Defender/Missile Boats/Zaarin Experimental TIES. Imagine a Tie Defender with a Enginer Overdriver Boast, SLAM Drives, 2 Racks of Advanced Concussion Missiles, 2 racks of Magpulse, and 2 Racks of Advanced Protons or Heavy Rockets. Toss in Qauntom Armor and Cloaking Devices.
(Yes, that is uber-wanking here, but come on, it's Palpatine)

Possible new Sith Order

Lots of Sovereign and Eclipse class (or larger) starships, complete with Superlasers.

Possible Hypergate technology if the Empire decides to crush the Gree Enclave.

Captured Vong technology. The idea of Vong organisms augmented with Sith alchemy and Imperial Cyberknitics if kinda cool.



from Star Trek: (since you mentioned it)
Genesis Torpedoes
Phase Cloaks
Transporters (depending on how you believe they affect consciousness/life/death). Imagine the Holonet equiped with Transporters to. You're on Coruscant at 12:01pm, you're on Tattooine at 12:03pm.
The empire would happily take all the 'one trick' wonders of the various series and exploit them to know end.

[Darksider]

Project Starscream: the Star wars version the of the 'T-Virus' from Resident Evil (but without the zombie-brains depending on how long you where dead), devices that cause psychic trauma, mutant super-soldiers, bio-weapons that turn you into brown-blobs

Gah.

You had to fucking remind me about that god-awful kids book series "Galaxy of Fear". More like "Galaxy of fecal matter" judging by the quality of it's books.

Anyhow, As has already been mentioned, a Star Destroyer sized superlaser platform designed to blast enemy capships into dust would be good. A couple thousand of those firing at key targets could turn the tide of a major engagement.

Death Stars. Lots of them. Planet killers are effective terror weapons, and NO reasonably sized fleet of SW level ships could take them on.

Quantum armor-this stuff made the Suncrusher nearly invounerable. Just think about what several layers of it could do to an ISD.

Speaking of the Suncrusher, more of those wouldn't hurt. And mabye think about designing a bigger platform for launching those Resonance torps. (Mabye hooking them up to Hyperspace probes and taking out stars from uber long range?)

That's all for now.

[Crazedwraith]

Death Stars or mainly DSI style Death star (with out the exhust port weakness) So Palpy has the best one.

Stuff like the pulsar station in Isard's revenge. Basically A DS where all the segments of the superlaser can fire indepdantly the purpsoe being the think can easy vape whole fleets in short order. (Imgine the DSII at endor only with eight times the firing rate)

[18-Till-I-Die]

I'm sorta going with Darksider on the idea of upgrading resonance torp tech but with a slight alteration:

World Devastator reproductive tech+Suncrusher resonance torpedoes+hyperspace probe tech. If i were Palpy, i would attempt to develop fleets of Suncrusher sized von numann machines with the potential to nova a sun. Unleash millions against an enemy galaxy and say bye bye to the galaxy, or at least any inhabited worlds therein. Combine that with phase cloaking, and replicators, and some nice quantum armor and it gets even better.

Yes, it's outlandish wank, but could you really tell me Palpy wouldnt if he could.

[Sea Skimmer]

There's nothing wrong with antimatter being used as a weapon. Are you saying there is?

There's nothing wrong? Yeah, nothing wrong except a total lack of safety which would cause any military with the slight bit of sense to totally reject the material for anything. The Empire already has weapons, which are compact and powerful then an anti matter weapon, so they have absolutely no reason to make use of such an insanely dangerous substance. At least the likes of even Nitroglycerin (something you don't see armies running around with) could be spilled without exploding, some of the time anyway.

[Sea Skimmer]

I'm sorta going with Darksider on the idea of upgrading resonance torp tech but with a slight alteration:

World Devastator reproductive tech+Suncrusher resonance torpedoes+hyperspace probe tech. If i were Palpy, i would attempt to develop fleets of Suncrusher sized von numann machines with the potential to nova a sun. Unleash millions against an enemy galaxy and say bye bye to the galaxy, or at least any inhabited worlds therein. Combine that with phase cloaking, and replicators, and some nice quantum armor and it gets even better.

Yes, it's outlandish wank, but could you really tell me Palpy wouldnt if he could.

He wouldn't. The absolute last thing a dictator wants is a huge fleet of ships with tiny crews all of which have the firepower to blow up planets. The risk of one being stolen or turning rouge and coming after him would simply be far too high.

[Admiral Bravo]

Hybrid Tie-Defender/Missile Boats/Zaarin Experimental TIES. Imagine a Tie Defender with a Enginer Overdriver Boast, SLAM Drives, 2 Racks of Advanced Concussion Missiles, 2 racks of Magpulse, and 2 Racks of Advanced Protons or Heavy Rockets. Toss in Qauntom Armor and Cloaking Devices.
(Yes, that is uber-wanking here, but come on, it's Palpatine)

If Palpatine did that he had better be as sure as hell that they were deployed in the most loyal units and commanders. After all, Zaarin managed to serously cripple the Empires Tie Defender/Avenger production capabilities by using those fighter to destroy as many factories as possible. Now imagine if a Grand Moff or Grand Admiral decided that Emperor sounded better and planned thier own little coup using those beauties. If they were going to be used there better be a self-destruct to prevent that sort of thing.

[Darksider]

The main problem with next-gen imperial weapons tech is that it can't be too uber, or somone would be able to use it to overthrow Palpatine, and he would never let it get past the initial test stages.

Look at the Death Star. He stationed his most powerfull agent on it, and god only knows how many other security systems he had in place.

[Illuminatus Primus]

FAP FAP FAP

[Icehawk]

*orgasms*

Ahhhhh Thanks for the "helping hand" IP!

[Stofsk]

There's nothing wrong with antimatter being used as a weapon. Are you saying there is?

There's nothing wrong? Yeah, nothing wrong except a total lack of safety which would cause any military with the slight bit of sense to totally reject the material for anything. The Empire already has weapons, which are compact and powerful then an anti matter weapon, so they have absolutely no reason to make use of such an insanely dangerous substance. At least the likes of even Nitroglycerin (something you don't see armies running around with) could be spilled without exploding, some of the time anyway.

To be honest, I was only writing in general terms and not with SW in mind; obviously the Empire doesn't need antimatter, and already have a wide range of explosive firepower in their turbolasers, superlasers etc. And I agree with you that the safety issues will likely limit or completely restrict the use of antimatter. There is no reason to build an AM weapon. But surely there are other applications for the use of AM (speaking generally, not with SW in mind)?

[NecronLord]

Lets pretend the Empire crushes the Rebels at Endor. The Empire conquers the Federation and the rest of the Milky Way galaxy, via a wormhole, and what technology that is useful is incorperated in the military. The Empire then starts to conquer the galaxies around it, only problem is that scouts have run into not only galaxies that are at the same tech level as they are, but there are also other powers that are around par with the Empire and have pretty much the same goals. The Emperor, not minding the compition as it will let the Empire show off its toys, orders Imperial engineers to develop the next generation of starships, weapons, vechicles, superweapons, etc in order to crush any threats as well as to persuade other empires to join the Empire. What kinds of weapons of war/gadgets would the Empire develop to fight what would esentially be a mirror or several mirror versions of itself?

It is unlikely the Empire will win this. The other sides can come up with equally clever toys, and the moronic nature of the Empire's planning "I'll use myself as bait in the trap" etc etc etc. means that against competant equivtech with equivalent numbers, they're essentially fucked unless Palpatine can pull out some uber sith power to use on his opponents. We already know that the Empire is severely under militrised compared to its size. In all likelyhood the Empire would be rapidly overrun by a more competant and militristic opponent.

[Admiral Bravo]

Lets pretend the Empire crushes the Rebels at Endor. The Empire conquers the Federation and the rest of the Milky Way galaxy, via a wormhole, and what technology that is useful is incorperated in the military. The Empire then starts to conquer the galaxies around it, only problem is that scouts have run into not only galaxies that are at the same tech level as they are, but there are also other powers that are around par with the Empire and have pretty much the same goals. The Emperor, not minding the compition as it will let the Empire show off its toys, orders Imperial engineers to develop the next generation of starships, weapons, vechicles, superweapons, etc in order to crush any threats as well as to persuade other empires to join the Empire. What kinds of weapons of war/gadgets would the Empire develop to fight what would esentially be a mirror or several mirror versions of itself?

It is unlikely the Empire will win this. The other sides can come up with equally clever toys, and the moronic nature of the Empire's planning "I'll use myself as bait in the trap" etc etc etc. means that against competant equivtech with equivalent numbers, they're essentially fucked unless Palpatine can pull out some uber sith power to use on his opponents. We already know that the Empire is severely under militrised compared to its size. In all likelyhood the Empire would be rapidly overrun by a more competant and militristic opponent.

This topic is about what tech the Empire would develop to fight that kind of threat, not if the Empire would win such a war. Also I doubt that the Emperor would try to use himself as bait since the whole reason he did this is to crush the Rebellion, not a rival power, in one stroke. Also were assuming that the Empire has been heavily militerized as it was originally planned after Endor. Also by this time they have conquered several galaxies before they made contact with the other powers so there pretty much on par with the other empires and vice versa.

[NecronLord]

Just raising the issue.

And even then, the Empire would have had less capital starships (bigger than ISDs) than the republic had full member worlds IIRC. That is rather under-militrised in my opinion.

[wolveraptor]

do they already have anti-matter bombs? because we're already creating anti-matter in labs. at that point in the future, with their near-infinite resources and advanced technology, anti-matter bombs would render weapons like the Death Star obsolete. all they'd have to do is plant an insignificant amount of anti-matter on any planet with some covert stealth ship, then sit back and watch the fireworks.

Total matter-to-energy conversion yields around 9E16 Joules per kilogram. The minimum energy to scatter an Earthlike planet's mass is around 2.2E32 Joules. Unless I've made a mistake somewhere, you'd need at least five trillion tons of antimatter for the job, and realisticly a lot more than that.

my mistake.