Why even have a Death Star anymore

[MKSheppard]

The new Disney SW is doubling down with the first novel that'll open the high republic era, set a few centuries before TPM:
Spoiler

You’ll have to head on over to IGN to read the full thing, but essentially, 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.

[Mr Bean]

Wow so the classic issue with Sci-Fi that the instant you have interstellar space flight you gain the ability to murder civilizations via throwing rocks at them is now 100x worse. In the new EU any idiot with a hyper drive can destroy planets at will. Any Han Solo could become a mass murder at will or on accident.

I prefer that first explanation (later demonstrated to be wrong) when Last Jedi came out that SW hyperdrives when they run up to accelerate beyond C have a narrow window when they are high fractions of C before crossing over into hyperspace. But that the window is so narrow as to make weaponisation next to impossible unless your enemey is stationary since you have to travel in a line during acceleration and any Captain worth his salt would dodge as soon as you started spooling up the hyperdrives.

Shame that was wrong and instead no just any idiot with a hyperdrive can melt planets.

[madd0ct0r]

can hit anywhere from the Core Worlds to the Outer Rim.

Sounds about as useful as a weapon as a grenade that will cause a large earthquake somewhere on earth.
A lone nihlist might want to do it, and possibly a madder tiny power might threaten it if anyone trys to invade them, but otherwise no strategic use.

[MKSheppard]

Wow so the classic issue with Sci-Fi that the instant you have interstellar space flight you gain the ability to murder civilizations via throwing rocks at them is now 100x worse. In the new EU any idiot with a hyper drive can destroy planets at will. Any Han Solo could become a mass murder at will or on accident.

Or even that you don't even need any kind of technology. Just accelerate into hyperspace, and then blow up the craft. It will fragment and the fragments will decelerate at hyperspeed and smash into things! A gigantic hyperdrive cosmic shotgun of doom!

How the fuck did we come from this:



to:

[Ralin]

So...the debris can come tumbling out of hyperspace at random anywhere in the galaxy?

Seems like you could do this with an entire armada and have negligible chances of ever hitting anything important. A galaxy is a huge place, and most of it is empty space.

[Gandalf]

I thought that this was sort of addressed as a concern when people asked about the point of a Death Star when big starships can just level planets anyway. The Death Star was more of a statement piece, that could travel up to any planet, be unassailable, blow away a planet, and be seen to do so.

[Mr Bean]

I thought that this was sort of addressed as a concern when people asked about the point of a Death Star when big starships can just level planets anyway. The Death Star was more of a statement piece, that could travel up to any planet, be unassailable, blow away a planet, and be seen to do so.

Planetary shields was the EU explanation for the Death Star and a damn good one since even a single theater generator the rebels had on Hoth was enough to give Vadar's entire fleet pause and make them launch a ground assault. If plants can throw up shields strong enough to laugh off a conventional fleet then any planet of sufficient economic status can hold out long enough for the Sector Fleet to show up. But the flip side is such a planet can easily hold off a number of Imperial ships or planets in open revolt can hold off entire fleets via a planetary shield network.

The Death Star was thus made a neat solution, a mobile base/central command facilitates with a weapon powerful enough to pop any planets planetary shield generators thus ensuring long term Imperial control. The fleets and the ground forces to maintain day to day control with the looming threat of the Death Star as something that no defense can stop.

[The Romulan Republic]

The Death Star always was a bit useless to be honest, because yeah any society with even close to light speed propulsion can easily mass produce planet killers, and because blowing up planets isn't actually that useful most of the time- certainly not if there's anything on the planet you need intact. It also pretty much forecloses any less brutal means of controlling the galaxy, meaning you'll be relying utterly on terror to keep things under control.

That said, it does have a few uses outside of planetary destruction.

1) The Death Star can punch through planetary shields, which some lesser WMDs can't.

2) Its also a massive mobile base/detention center/command center.

3) Its meant to show off how powerful the Empire is. Its a status symbol as much as a practical weapon.

So... its not that useful, but its as useful as it ever was. Naturally, this won't stop screaming about how Disney has ruined the OT.

[Batman]

How exactly is wreckage from a ship that was travelling to the frontier a danger to the Core Worlds?

[Solauren]

To Batman: Apparently, it screws hyperspace and the laws of physics enough to create a crappy alternate timeline....
To TRR: Actually, in the old EU, there was someone that was using acceleration technology as a plant killer. The old 'Asteroid of doom' trick, specifically.

Planetary shield technology was developed as the counter to that, and became widespread quickly as it stopped the warlord that was doing it.

That was around 25,000 years before Yavin, give or take.

A counter to Planetary Shields wasn't found until the Death Star was built, as well as Torpedo Spheres.

[Galvatron]

Planetary shields was the EU explanation for the Death Star and a damn good one

I think it was more of a fan extrapolation (and one I've been preaching for nearly two decades) than something the old EU ever bothered outright explaining.

I wouldn't be surprised if the new EU is just as inept at putting the pieces together as the old one was.

[bilateralrope]

I remember that the old EU had something about passing through a gravity well while in hyperspace being a bad thing for the ship involved. So hyperdrives had a safety to pull ships out of hyperspace before they were too deep in a gravity well. If that bad thing happened during the speeding up before a ship vanished, that would get in the way of hyperdrive ramming a planet.

Or course, that went out the window when TFA had ships using hyperspace jumps to get under planetary shields. Though I'll admit that I don't remember the exact date Disney decanonised he old EU.

[Galvatron]

That was also the entire point of old EU's Imperial interdictors, which the new EU has used extensively as well.

On the other hand, if hyperdrives actually have a safety mechanism then why all the hoopla from Han in ANH that "without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova?"

Maybe the old EU was wrong all along. It wouldn't surprise me in the least.

[bilateralrope]

Maybe Han was lying a bit. The first thing that comes to mind is that he didn't want to trip the safety because that risks breaking something else on the Falcon.

The other possibility is that, as a smuggler, he had tweaked how deep into a gravity well he'd have to be before it triggers and if it hit a star, he'd come out of hyperspace too close to it and get cooked.

[Galvatron]

Also possible is that one of Han's modifications was disabling the safety outright so he could shave some time off his usual smuggling runs. A regular ship may be able to just punch it without needing to wait for its navicomputer to calculate a precise course.

[bilateralrope]

Another big problem with such a safety system: If you're being chased, anyone chasing you is going to come out of hyperspace very close to where you do. Worse still, if you're being chased by someone who has a better nav computer, the gravity well might only be a surprise to you.

We could probably spend quite a while coming up with plausible reasons why Han would want to avoid triggering the safety. So I think we can agree that it's a system that everyone would try to avoid triggering in most circumstances. Just like a car seatbelt.

[Mr Bean]

Another big problem with such a safety system: If you're being chased, anyone chasing you is going to come out of hyperspace very close to where you do. Worse still, if you're being chased by someone who has a better nav computer, the gravity well might only be a surprise to you.

We could probably spend quite a while coming up with plausible reasons why Han would want to avoid triggering the safety. So I think we can agree that it's a system that everyone would try to avoid triggering in most circumstances. Just like a car seatbelt.

The Corellia trilogy featuring a massive interdiction field as a plot point explains what the issue is and why gravity shadows and interdiction ships are such an issue. Gravity messes with hyperspace, ships traveling in hyperspace via hyper drives suffer catastrophic failures as their hyperdrive engines can't keep them IN hyperdrive while near massive gravity fields such as from planets, stars or other astral bodies. Basically if you try and take a hyperdrive ship and plot a course through a planet (OLD EU) your hyperdrive would melt down in your ship and you'd drop out of hyperdrive likely somewhere inside the planet and go kaboom.

Thus an older neat explanation that the new Star Wars has rendered moot. It's one of the best and worst things about pre TFA Star Wars was authors taking the time to sit down and figure out why people said things then using that as plot points in their books for better or worse. The Hyperdrive causes hyperdrives to burn out so auto-safety's shut them down before your hyperdrive go boom was a neat bit of explanation but as mentioned it's no longer valid. In the current movie trilogy they do things all the time that old Star Wars said should kill them dead so we must discard these explanations as no longer valid.

[MKSheppard]

Naturally, this won't stop screaming about how Disney has ruined the OT.

For someone who's spent a lot of time organ grinding in the other threads on this forum about how to "fix" the sequel trilogy, you're pretty dense when it comes to the basic facts.

The entire Sequel trilogy played fast and loose with the setting of Star Wars, to the point where it can't really be considered Star Wars anymore.

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

Again, watch closely the two clips I posted earlier.

[Galvatron]

Don't forget the U-wing jumping to hyperspace on Jedha in R1 (technically not the sequel trilogy).

[chimericoncogene]

People keep defending the recent pivot into setting nonchalance and inconsistency by insisting that Star Wars was never about setting consistency to begin with.

It's rather annoying, because, "Star Wars values" or not, setting consistency and reasonable story logic is a laudable goal for any reasonable storyteller.

[Batman]

Star Wars never WAS about setting consistency. Technology in the EU was all over the place, sublight accelleration, FTL speed, firepower, shield resilience...
The OT managed to be relatively consistent because at the time there WAS only the trilogy, not because they actually tried to.

[chimericoncogene]

Which lasted until ICS brought some sanity and ballpark values to the whole discussion. Like I said, regardless of whether or not setting consistency is a feature of SW (I mostly agree that it is not particularly consistent), aiming for a ballpark or avoiding logic issues that are far too obvious should be a reasonable goal.

[Darth Yan]

For the most part it is. The EU is where shit propped up

[Gandalf]

Star Wars never WAS about setting consistency. Technology in the EU was all over the place, sublight accelleration, FTL speed, firepower, shield resilience...
The OT managed to be relatively consistent because at the time there WAS only the trilogy, not because they actually tried to.

It also helped that there's so little detail in places that you could fill in the gaps really easily with headcanon.

[chimericoncogene]

It also helped that there's so little detail in places that you could fill in the gaps really easily with headcanon.

And, IMO, that was seriously a good thing, allowing different people to interpret Star Wars as they saw fit. More sci fi writers should do that, especially if they're not good with the whole scale thing.