Volume of Xyston-class Star Destroyer?

[Galvatron]

Yeah, but this hurts less than banging my head against a brick wall.

[Vympel]

As if there was any lingering doubt in my mind that Pablo's VDs are anything but toilet paper, it just came to my attention that the one he did for TLJ states that the door to Luke's hut on Ahch-To was salvaged from one of his X-wing's s-foils.

Yes, the same perfectly-intact and fully-functional X-wing that Rey used in TROS.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Luke%27s_hut

The door was salvaged from one of the X-Wing's S-Foils. That door is seen repeatedly in TLJ. Its seen, still on the hut, in TROS too. How is JJ and Terrio re-interpreting a symbol of Luke's isolation and intention to never leave into a cheap and unearned memberberry* Pablo's fault?

People have asserted that the X-Wing model in TROS is missing the relevant part of its wing the door was taken from, but there's no evidence that I can see that this is the case. For reference:





*None of that crass-ass fan service would've been required if Luke hadn't appeared earlier and told Rey to maybe not burn her ship, lol.

A. The lack of models. The Orig Trig, obviously, had little planned design for the universe. ANH was done seat of the pants, ESB created much of the lore from whole cloth, and ROTJ was a deflationary creative note. But, every effects shot in those movies had to be practical. Which meant that there were physical models that could be scaled and modeled up. The Prequel trilogy didn't use hard models but did use computer models in an era when computer modeling was still cutting-edge and their use, and reuse, was crucial to being able to make the product.The Sequel Trilogy has no such restrictions and no models, as such could remake everything from scene to scene, destroying regularity and making the sort of blanket statements about 'classes' of ships impossible.

What's your evidence for this? There's no evidence whatsoever that the Sequel Trilogy has 'no restrictions and no models'. Heck, the Xyston-class is clearly an adaptation of the ISD-1 model made for Rogue One, which was also used for Solo.

[Straha]

A. The lack of models. The Orig Trig, obviously, had little planned design for the universe. ANH was done seat of the pants, ESB created much of the lore from whole cloth, and ROTJ was a deflationary creative note. But, every effects shot in those movies had to be practical. Which meant that there were physical models that could be scaled and modeled up. The Prequel trilogy didn't use hard models but did use computer models in an era when computer modeling was still cutting-edge and their use, and reuse, was crucial to being able to make the product.The Sequel Trilogy has no such restrictions and no models, as such could remake everything from scene to scene, destroying regularity and making the sort of blanket statements about 'classes' of ships impossible.

What's your evidence for this? There's no evidence whatsoever that the Sequel Trilogy has 'no restrictions and no models'. Heck, the Xyston-class is clearly an adaptation of the ISD-1 model made for Rogue One, which was also used for Solo.

An error on my end. I meant to say "no such restrictions and no physical models". Do I think the Xyston class is an adaptation of saved CGI models of star destroyers? Sure. Do I think that Disney and ILM have the computational power to fuck around however they want on the models to tweak them as they see fit any particular shot? Also yes. Do I think that anyone at Disney or in the Abrams' production crew for TROS gave a shit to ensure continuity between the movies? No. In fact, I think that they had almost the opposite approach (see: the first section of your post.)


My arg is simple: Previously there were meta-narrative reasons to believe that there was continuity both during and between the movies, and half the fun of analysis was coming up with in-universe reasons for why the design choices existed. Now there are significant meta-narrative reasons to believe that there is no such continuity. If you have reasons to believe such continuity exists, I would love to see it*. Otherwise, this strikes me as something between a ridiculous endeavour and something reasonably explained by 'a space wizard did it.'



* I actually don't know that I would. TROS has removed the Star Wars monkey from my back. I have no more interest in the series and feel happier for it. I'm free.

[Galvatron]

The door was salvaged from one of the X-Wing's S-Foils.

You seem quite certain of that, but is there anything in the script or novelization that actually corroborates the VD? FWIW, here's a shot of Luke's X-wing in TLJ, but I'd say it's inconclusive...

[Vympel]

The door was salvaged from one of the X-Wing's S-Foils.

You seem quite certain of that, but is there anything in the script or novelization that actually corroborates the VD? FWIW, here's a shot of Luke's X-wing in TLJ, but I'd say it's inconclusive...

Dude, its in the movie, shown multiple times. You're talking like this is something the VD made up without reference to the film, and its just not.



This horseshit about the X-Wing being flyable fresh out of the water is 100% a retcon by TROS because Abrams and Terrio wanted their TESB reference.

Also, the novelization:

Below her, she caught sight of a shape under the waters of a shallow bay - a shape too angular to be natural. She realized it was an X-Wing fighter, corroded by long immersion in the salt water.

...

She gazed morosely at the submerged X-Wing. So that was where the door had come from - Skywalker had salvaged one of the wings. Had he stripped it of anything else? Her practiced eye picked out the location of antenna coils, maneuvering repulsors, static discharge couplings, and other gear that she once might have removed and bargained for rations.

I don't think that's salvageable. Zero portions.

She smiled slightly at the idea of Unkar Plutt gaping at a starfighter that was now more reef than vehicle. The reactor would still be out-putting residual heat, but that would do no one any good except nearby fish and crustaceans. Maybe some of the wiring and conduits would still be intact, inside their protective jacketing. Everything else, though, would be junk.

Granted, that didn't necessarily mean you couldn't clean it up and try to pass it off as operational - plenty of unscrupulous dealers back in Niima Outpost had eked out a living that way. But the result would be a malfunction or a breakdown waiting to happen.

[Galvatron]

Dude, its in the movie, shown multiple times. You're talking like this is something the VD made up without reference to the film, and its just not.

I wasn't denying that the door was shown in the film, but I never recognized it as a segment of Luke's X-wing when I saw it.

Assuming the novelization is canon, I guess the Force can heal spaceships too now.

Also, am I the only one who can't see your images? They just show up as text with "image" in their place. They're not even hyperlinks.

[Vympel]

I wasn't denying that the door was shown in the film, but I never recognized it as a segment of Luke's X-wing when I saw it.

Assuming the novelization is canon, I guess the Force can heal spaceships too now.

Also, am I the only one who can't see your images? They just show up as text with "image" in their place. They're not even hyperlinks.

The novels are canon but hey, look what TROS thought of that.

Not sure why you can't see the images. They're working for me. Did you try copying the URL from within them?

[Galvatron]

Didn't the old policy say that the novelizations were only canon where they didn't conflict with the films? For example, in the ROTJ novelization Obi-Wan said that Uncle Owen was his brother, but that's clearly not canon now.

[Esquire]

It did, thus neatly solving the problem. I guess somebody shouldn't have said that all canon is at the exact same level and then not bothered to check things for consistency, shouldn't they?

[Galvatron]

Is that their new policy?

[Esquire]

That was my understanding - I don't have a source handy, to be fair.

[Galvatron]

[Patroklos]

If he was going to bring up reactors he should probably have pointed a simple volume comparison between the ISD I, this piece of setting trash, and the two DSs.

Also the idea that the completely lifeless as depicted Byss-light would be advancing in technology and industrial base since ROTJ rather than precipitously sliding backwards in its isolation is ridiculous. Even if known knowledge is static due to advanced storage new knowledge occurs the old fashioned way as Rogue one showed us. Does anyone else think those grimy blacksmith dudes are out innovating Kuat or Rendilli or even me in my garage? Was the originally DS super laser created in a D&D dungeon? Even if there are droid/foundry worlds And this is one of them, if this pile of barren rocks can do it so can any number of millions of worlds.

I wonder when we are going to get some fan art of the Xystrom bridge with double sized windows, consoles, and maybe toilets to highlight the absurdity for good measure.

Is anyone else curious what ship’s bridge windows they were looking out of when the blew up the nowhere planet?

[Galvatron]

I wonder when we are going to get some fan art of the Xystrom bridge with double sized windows, consoles, and maybe toilets to highlight the absurdity for good measure.

Is anyone else curious what ship’s bridge windows they were looking out of when the blew up the nowhere planet?

The Xystons were obviously crewed by giant clones.

[SAAA]

Well leaving aside the poor modeling work, it isn't a stretch for a star destroyer sized ship to almost destroy a planet if you go by ICS like calcs and add a superlaser to do the actual job.

I mean even using a conservative 1e25W for the total reactor output (I say conservative as I don't think an ISD is only a couple times more powerful than a Venator's 3.6e24 W) with a day of charging time that's already close to 1e30 J.

Now Earth binding energy is still hundreds times more at 2.2e32 J, but consider this detail: Moon's binding energy is just 1.2e29J, this amount is already enough to destroy several Moons over! I can see thousand kilometres chunks of crust going into orbit, still not enough to destroy a planet like in the movie but it's something at least.

Another method:
Death Star is 160km across, the incredible cross section and other sources suggest a reactor about 1/10th the diameter, hence 16km.

What about an imperial star destroyer? Visual sources point to 150-200 m across. To confirm I have a scale model at hand and the exposed dome is already 130 m wide, but the curvature suggests an even larger diameter, let's pick exactly 160 m which results in a millionth the volume compared to the above.
Assuming similar power generation and energy storage results in 1e32 J, it's getting better and I didn't even consider a larger ship/reactor or newer tech.

The range of planetary destruction varies a lot between Alderaan explosion, the Xyston planet kill and the minimum energy to destroy a planet, but the actual numbers aren't that far this time. Is it an excusable error for a movie?
I think so, at least it's better than km long spaceships firing at each other with less power and range than 20th century battleships, think like in ROTS (still love the battle sequence more than any sequels and that is telling).

Heck is there any show that has realistic firepower for huge capital ships and isn't some Japanese anime? Even the silly ships from Independence day have some cool defensive feats but a fraction of the destructive power they should have with that size.

[Sky Captain]

I mean even using a conservative 1e25W for the total reactor output (I say conservative as I don't think an ISD is only a couple times more powerful than a Venator's 3.6e24 W) with a day of charging time that's already close to 1e30 J.

Now Earth binding energy is still hundreds times more at 2.2e32 J, but consider this detail: Moon's binding energy is just 1.2e29J, this amount is already enough to destroy several Moons over! I can see thousand kilometres chunks of crust going into orbit, still not enough to destroy a planet like in the movie but it's something at least.

If the Xyston has similar sustained output to our sun it would take a week assuming perfect efficiency to produce enough energy (and somehow store it) to destroy Earth like planet. Feels ridiculously overpowered to have that much energy generation and storage in a mid size ship. When looking at it superlaser really seems just slapped on as an afterthought instead of being a proper spinal mount in a heavily armored enclosure the rest of the ship is built around. I think better idea would be to have half a dozen or so dedicated superlaser ships in 15 - 20 km size range escorted by few hundred regular Stardestroyers. It would make Final Order fleet more balanced (while still making it a deadly threat if it breaks out and goes on a rampage) and show that planetary destruction is serious business requiring very large specialized ship.

I think so, at least it's better than km long spaceships firing at each other with less power and range than 20th century battleships, think like in ROTS (still love the battle sequence more than any sequels and that is telling).

Heck is there any show that has realistic firepower for huge capital ships and isn't some Japanese anime? Even the silly ships from Independence day have some cool defensive feats but a fraction of the destructive power they should have with that size.

Yeah, can't think of any movie or show that has stellar level firepower properly depicted. Not sure how it even should look visually, probably everything would be lost in a blinding glare if viewed from a ship involved in combat while observer from afar would see something like a new raging star suddenly born where engaged fleets are. Potential for collateral damage would be catastrophic unless everything has suitable shielding. It would have catastrophic effects on unshielded planets from several million km out.

[Patroklos]

If all they wanted to do was wreck the planetary surface all they need to do is put together a drivable DS mass or three sans the super laser, drop it in orbit of the target planet, and slosh the oceans or crack the crust via tidal forces until life is suitably wrecked to not care if thing literally explodes. This method should work through planetary shields too. The relative sizes/masses of the planet and weapons would impact suitable targets it would be effective against, but given the tech observed the weaponsized mass should be able to enter well within the Rochester limit. Now that we know atmosphere is no hindrance to large ships, only a planetary shield should limit the proximity to the surface.

Then again SW tech can obviously manipulate gravity somewhat. I can’t think of anything that would specifically address such an attack though

[Vance]

Cheers for the replies and interesting discussion.

I don't think a large capital ship (bigger than an ISD) with a planet-destroying (kyber enhanced) superlaser is as technologically far-fetched as it may first appear, assuming its superlaser is kyber-enhanced. The lower limit to destroy a planet by overcoming gravitational-binding-energy is something like ~e32J, and this involves blasting much of the planet's mass into space at around escape velocity, ~11km/s.

But when the Death Star destroyed Alderaan much of the planet blasted apart at millions of kilometres per hour, or up to around a thousand times faster than escape velocity. A thousand-fold increase in velocity equals a million-fold increase in energy.

So this means that a "miniature Death Star" between 1.2 km and 1.6 km in diameter might still conceivably generate the power needed to destroy a whole planet albeit in a much less violent fashion, as the planetary explosion would unfold around a thousand times more slowly. Scaling like this, it is predicted that a starship around 2.14e9 cubic meters in size could facilitate both the downscaled reactor and a super laser.

This is pretty much bang on the size of a Trade Federation control ship. But it is still several times larger than an Imperial star destroyer.

If we say the Xyston star destroyer is around 2.36e8 cubic meters, then this is nine million times smaller than a 160 km Death Star. If the Death Star firepower is e38J and the Xyston is e32J, then the Xyston might be around ten times more efficient/energy-dense. However, the Xyston and the Death Star are not worlds apart in terms of energy density/power scaling.

My biggest problems with this movie centre around the narrative itself, Palpatine, and the Force, not so much the power scaling or logistics (JJ doesn't handle those things too well either, but at least those things are mostly somewhat feasible; having said that the "lightspeed skipping" did make me feel like I was in the wrong movie).

[Galvatron]

But when the Death Star destroyed Alderaan much of the planet blasted apart at millions of kilometres per hour, or up to around a thousand times faster than escape velocity. A thousand-fold increase in velocity equals a million-fold increase in energy.

That's what I was trying to say earlier in the thread, although I'm not mathematically-inclined enough to articulate the calculations.

I'm more put off by the scaling issues with the Xystons than their superlasers, to be honest. We can hand-wave the rest with technobabble.

[Sky Captain]

But when the Death Star destroyed Alderaan much of the planet blasted apart at millions of kilometres per hour, or up to around a thousand times faster than escape velocity. A thousand-fold increase in velocity equals a million-fold increase in energy.

Yeah, original Death Star was massive overkill. I have read it explained as that you basically need that amount of overkill to break through high end planetary shields so it may be justified

If we say the Xyston star destroyer is around 2.36e8 cubic meters, then this is nine million times smaller than a 160 km Death Star. If the Death Star firepower is e38J and the Xyston is e32J, then the Xyston might be around ten times more efficient/energy-dense. However, the Xyston and the Death Star are not worlds apart in terms of energy density/power scaling.

I would like to give Death Star better power density than regular mid size destroyer because its giant reactor should benefit from some scaling factors allowing it to reach better power density. Also Death Star could have systems that are too large or don't scale down to fit average warship. If we just scaled down to fighter size while keeping same power density we would have fighters with with megaton range firepower while on screen they produce explosions comparable to anti tank missiles.

I'm more put off by the scaling issues with the Xystons than their superlasers, to be honest. We can hand-wave the rest with technobabble.

Yeah, it was incredibly lazy to have ISD model from Rogue One scaled up and modified a bit, they blew the chance to introduce new cool ship. Something resembling Eclipse dreadnought with superlaser would fit perfectly.


Xystons just made the whole super weapon thing far too casual, previously super weapons were large scale projects like both Death stars and Starkiller base, now every mid size warship with some upgrades can have one.

[Galvatron]

Starkiller Base being Ilum explains a lot. It explains how the whole planet was able to be transformed into another planet-killing superweapon and perhaps also where the kyber crystals came from that powered the Xystons' superlasers.

It also means that the First Order's (and Sith Eternal's) superweapons would actually be difficult to replace.

[Anacronian]

First can't we find a good solution to the question "Why can't the Xyston Destroyers not fly "UP" without navigational aid?".

[Batman]

No

[Vendetta]

First can't we find a good solution to the question "Why can't the Xyston Destroyers not fly "UP" without navigational aid?".

There’s no up in space so they aren’t trained for flying up.

[Batman]

Though 'you're above a planet, maybe point the ship away from it and step on the gas' isn't that much of an intellectual leap