Defeating a Death Star

[consequences]

Problem, that assumes that starfighters can get through the shields. Since we know that the shield being generated from Endor needed to be brought down for the fighter assault to go in, and that the DS2 could fire its superlaser through that shield, there is no reason to believe that that design defect from the DS1 was carried over to the new design. Excellent strategy for cheaply curbstomping the DS1, provided you increase the numbers for the first wave, as the DS has a minimum of 7000 Ties, which you can't automatically assume are going to sit idle.

[Solauren]

Problem, that assumes that starfighters can get through the shields. Since we know that the shield being generated from Endor needed to be brought down for the fighter assault to go in, and that the DS2 could fire its superlaser through that shield, there is no reason to believe that that design defect from the DS1 was carried over to the new design. Excellent strategy for cheaply curbstomping the DS1, provided you increase the numbers for the first wave, as the DS has a minimum of 7000 Ties, which you can't automatically assume are going to sit idle.

Clarification needed I see.

1- If my fighters can't get through the shields, Seismic Charges should still do lots of damage to the shields until an area of them collapses.

2- I took the Death Star fighters into account. That's what tossing Seismic Charges into the hanger bays were for (Missile Boats a max burn move close to 3 - 4 times a Tie Fighter)

[Darth Mall]

hey consequences you seem to be obsessesed with those droid fighters. but would it not be likely that the death star would have one of those magical devices called jammers? would that not render almost all of your droids almost if not totally useless, so instead take out thier computers and thier weapon systems and fill them with two types of explosives
1. first wave- ion pulse generators to knock out the shielding so that

2. wave two- filled with detonite or baridium(sp) to make large thermal detonators to finish of the shielding and melt down the hull iof the DSII creating hull breaches to kill lots o crew and take out turbo lasers then ISD's
would move close to the hull as to avoid being hit by the super laser if it is still working. also consequences if the emporer is a jackass he would have no fleet to destroy my ISD's, therefore i will keep pounding away until the DSII is nothing but a thin hull around the reactor which will then have detonators places on it and be surrounded by a mine field to stop zero g troopers, pull the fleet out and boom

[Phyre]

Problem, that assumes that starfighters can get through the shields. Since we know that the shield being generated from Endor needed to be brought down for the fighter assault to go in, and that the DS2 could fire its superlaser through that shield, there is no reason to believe that that design defect from the DS1 was carried over to the new design. Excellent strategy for cheaply curbstomping the DS1, provided you increase the numbers for the first wave, as the DS has a minimum of 7000 Ties, which you can't automatically assume are going to sit idle.

Clarification needed I see.

1- If my fighters can't get through the shields, Seismic Charges should still do lots of damage to the shields until an area of them collapses.

2- I took the Death Star fighters into account. That's what tossing Seismic Charges into the hanger bays were for (Missile Boats a max burn move close to 3 - 4 times a Tie Fighter)

Seismic charges would do very little against a shield. Especially since they work via sending seismic waves through matter. And you'd never even get close to the hanger bay, remember little things called turrets. Plus they'd deploy ships as soon as you were in there scanners, not just once you got inside the shields. Had the seismic charge idea worked, dontcha think the rebelion woulda used it against the DS2 (which wasn't fully constructed yet)?

[consequences]

Solauren, you also have to bear in mind that any reasonably competent DS commander would maintain a Combat Space Patrol, and that the gut reaction of any DS commander after what happened to the first DS would be "Starfighters?! Kill them now, now you hear me!"

Darth Mall, what complex strategies exactly do I need to communicate to the droids? As things stand, there are only a few important directions they need to adhere to.
1: These are TIE fighters/Interceptors/Bombers. Shoot them.
2: If no TIEs, these are gun turrets. Shoot them.
3: If no turrets, this is DS. Shoot it.
4: If you have no guns, Ram viable targets.
5: These are Friendlies. Do not attempt to Shoot/move through them to get to targets, go around.
6: This is recovery signal. If you receive it return to viable carrier.
Given that C3P0 can hold six million complete forms of communication in his head, I think the fighter computer can deal with this.
Droid fighters, why? Because I don't need to train pilots for them, I can cram lots more of them into a carrier, they have a reduced target profile, and they aren't going to get demoralised after I send the first ten million of them to their deaths.
If you paid attention to my plan, you would also know that
I intend to cut the thing off completely from any sort of sensory input/communication, so the jamming won't matter until the fighters are at point-blank range. at which point, if my fighters smack straight into the DS, they are still somewhat serving their purpose.

Darth Mall, If you can see the DS, the DS can see you. If you can shoot at it, it can shoot at you. Since it has, at a minimum, more guns than your average sector fleet, and more shielding than a million of your ships, it will probably win.

In any case, to address the Eclipse/Sovereign Superlaser discrepancies:

It is stated that the beam charges at 1D DS scale each minute, with an 8D max charge, and 8/11D maximum possible per day, for the Sovereign/Eclipse.
Wouldn't it make more sense to have a large capacitor that charges over the course of the day, with a maximum 8D ouput through the Superlaser? Going with the lazy method of multiplying an ISDs available power x1000(taking the length multiplier, and using that for all dimensions, assuming an equivalent power increase), we come up with app. 1e28 worth of charge every second. That, x86400, gives us 8.64x10^32 joules, sufficient to overcome the Gravitational attraction of an unshielded planet, or to possibly overcome a planetary shield, and do major damage to the surface. Using that, and the lowest-end DS2 figures, you would need at least 3 Sovereigns to overload the shields. If you use higher end DS figures, the number of superlaser platforms needed ramps up considerably. But this does mean that with our limited information, the 8 Sovereign+1 Eclipse gambit could conceivably work.
Since I am a pessimist at heart, I'm sticking to my plan. Even if its a horrible amount of overkill, its still not even a percentage point of the material used in building the DS2.

[FOG3]

Why however would a DS commander let you set up a Night-cloak system? Even if the do what's preventing them from shooting it down? This is not a primitive planet it's a fully armed and operational battlestation. If we use WEG's loadout for the DS1 as a low end it has at least 100 TIE wings, 2,840 Skipray Blastboats, and 3,600 Gamma-Class Assault (loaded with Space Troopers) among other support craft any of which can be sent out to deal with such incursions.

Most people seem to agree only the Imperial Fleet has a chance of stopping a fully operational Death Star with a good commander. Seems as how Palpatine was supposed to have two more being built around Corusant(sp?), the Empire could certainly stopped one of them going rogue if the Rebels hadn't won the Battle of Endor.

[HemlockGrey]

I agree with whoever suggested torpedospheres.

Or tractor in lots of very large asteroids, strap a hyperdrive on them, and point them at the Death Star.

[consequences]

Because the Nightcloak I'm going to set up is going to be at least a triple(maybe 5-10x, depending on availability of ships) redundant system, distributed through thousands of light capital ships. The main purpose of it is to last the few minutes it will take to set up the hammer blows I am going to throw at the DS. And I intend to have literally millions of fighters for this operation.

[Sea Skimmer]

I seriously doubt a nightcloak is going to defeat the Death Stars sensors. Hell it can probably fry battleships with them.

[consequences]

I'm working by the principle of "every little bit" here. There's no way the tactic can hurt me(it's kind of difficult to miss the 900 km sphere of darkness), and may impede them. At the least, it will make the coordination of its onboard craft, and possible accompanying fleet, more difficult.

Say, does anyone know what happens when you use one of those Grav-Shock devices against the DS?

[Matt7]

Okay, here goes. This may be bending the rules a little, however my idea involves using a "superweapon" in a slightly different role than it was intended for. And another idea just for fun.
Idea #1. Take the Sun Crusher (remember, invincible quantum armour), and ram it straight through the middle, right through the core and out the other side.
Idea #2. If you played X-Wing Alliance, remember the mission that has you defending Home One (I think, can't remember if it was Home One or Liberty) against many experimental droid TIE fighters. Remember, the flying bombs? So, you build millions of those, have interdictors in the system to keep the DS from running, and ram all of the droid TIE's, one after another, into exactly the same spot on the DS until they pierce the core.
*reason the Sun Crusher counts - it's superweapon is the resonance torpedoes which nova a sun. Not using them here.
**or, layer a freighter or a corvette with quantum armor and use that to ram the DS, thereby eliminating the "superweapon" part

[Phyre]

Send a few barrages from a rebuilt galaxy gun.

[consequences]

The problem with the flying bombs theory, is that unless they are truly incredible explosions, hitting the DS with them one at a time isn't going to overload the shields. Remember that SW shields basically ignore everything below a certain threshold, dependent on the shield's power, and will harmlessly dissipate the energy from any attacks that do not exceed that threshold.

The Quantum armored projectile may work, but it would have to be very massive, and moving at near light speeds to do what you are describing.

The Galaxy Gun's a great idea, it just breaks the rules put forth in the thread.

[Matt7]

the quantom armored projectile, IMO, would work better if you add this part:
Let's take a quantum-armored Corellian Corvette. It goes as fast as it can and rams itself into the DS. It rams through a few layers of armor and stops. It backs up, and accelerates to full speed again, hitting in the exact same spot, this time going through more armor. It keeps doing this until it eventually reaches the core, which it either rams or torpedoes (if it can still use any after all that ramming.
BTW, my idea for this came from Jedi Search, when Han rams the Sun Crusher through the bridge of the SD in Maw Installation. That seemed to work OK.
And as for the flying bombs theory, do you know or remember how many crashes it took to blow the Liberty in XWA? Or is it still to impractical?

[Eleas]

the quantom armored projectile, IMO, would work better if you add this part:
Let's take a quantum-armored Corellian Corvette. It goes as fast as it can and rams itself into the DS. It rams through a few layers of armor and stops. It backs up, and accelerates to full speed again, hitting in the exact same spot, this time going through more armor. It keeps doing this until it eventually reaches the core, which it either rams or torpedoes (if it can still use any after all that ramming.

You discount the little fact that 1) it's a superweapon (the sun crusher is, at least), and 2) the fact that the DS2 has the most powerful shields in the galaxy.

BTW, my idea for this came from Jedi Search, when Han rams the Sun Crusher through the bridge of the SD in Maw Installation. That seemed to work OK.

The scene is ludicrous and plainly contradicted by just about every source on shields imaginable. Just because something is very hard, does it then follow that it penetrates everything, at any speed? Of course not.

And as for the flying bombs theory, do you know or remember how many crashes it took to blow the Liberty in XWA? Or is it still to impractical?

It's a game, and therefore, it matters not.

[YT300000]

And as for the flying bombs theory, do you know or remember how many crashes it took to blow the Liberty in XWA? Or is it still to impractical?

On hard, it took hundreds. The DS is billions of times bigger.

[consequences]

With shields at least(bare minimum figures, less than a tenth of a percent of minimum known power curves, much less maximum possible capacity) a million times stronger than the Liberty's.

Even if we allow the quantum armored projectile, it will still be vulnerable to Ion cannons, tractor beams, and ridiculous quantities of damage. Remember the DS prototype's superlaser did bad things to the Sun Crusher with a grazing hit.