I'm not really sure what point you were trying to make with the second part of that post.

I was being facetious. I'm aware of the Australian ban, but thought your comparison was amusing.

Also: Darksaber [was that the title?] probably won't make the EU cut. So not to worry. After this post, we can all go back to pretending it didn't happen.

Apologies. Poe's Law, and all that.

And yes, Darksaber was the Hutt-funded Death Star copy so named because of its resemblance to a gigantic lightsaber. (They named it Darksaber because eeeevil.) But, outside of some pretty bad fanfic by a guy named Kevin J. Anderson, I don't think the idea has any real support in Star Wars lore.

Also: It's not a blockade, it's a quarantine.

Generally, Star Wars space is treated as being very planar (KHAN!!!!).

Ever notice how the various planetary blockades (Ep 1, TCW), are always engaged by the attacking force flying straight at a group of ships positioned in one very fractional portion of the planet's orbit?

The very idea of a blockade is almost absurd. Sure, it could be done with multiple capital ships and a lot of smaller vessels, but at a certain point it isn't cost effective, you would be better off just bombarding all the production facilities and spaceports from orbit. Maybe keep a SD in the system to ward off any aid efforts. Thrawn's solution was pretty clever though.

Orbital bombardments are one of those "blatant act of aggression" things though. Blockades on the other hand are something that can be resolved with diplomacy. If you're trying to force a resolution without starting a shooting war a blockade is quite cost effective.

And it's not all that huge. Real-world spacecraft orbit earth once every 45 minutes or so. So if you take say... a half dozen capital ships and lay out their orbits with some thought you'd probably be able to get reasonable coverage. Toss in sensor buoys and probe droids to fill in gaps, and fighter groups and patrol boats to do rapid reaction, and you'd have a respectable chance of intercepting most craft. You'd still have the occasional blockade runner of course, but one CR90 a week can't feed a planet.

And I didn't even mention mines.

Blockades work much like No Fly Zones, IRL, fairly effectively. With predictive algorithms and sensors, it's easy to deploy fighters to intercept fleeing craft and blow it out of the sky. It takes ~ 5 minutes for a spacecraft to exit a planet's gravity well, which is plenty of time in Star Wars for fighters to arrive. In order to circumvent a blockade you need either to

• Have a ship that can fight back or withstand attack by enemy fighters
• Have a ship that can outrun enemy fighters
• Have a ship that can evade military grade sensors
• Some combinations of the three.

Stuff like the Tantive IV Blockade Runner or upgunned Corellion YT freighters are perfect- while they are not faster than freighters they can carry enough armor and shielding to take on a couple of TIEs (Or in the case of Blockade Runners, a whole squadron) while being faster than Imperial capital ships. In fact, specific craft like Missile Boats and Blastboats were designed to take down these blockade runner specifically.

Dealing with smugglers, as in most cases becomes a game of intelligence and cloak and dagger stuff rather than setting patrol routes and tactics.

Only smugglers and military units would really be able to effectively break a blockade, commercial companies and civilians wouldn't stand a chance.

Orbital bombardments are one of those "blatant act of aggression" things though. Blockades on the other hand are something that can be resolved with diplomacy. If you're trying to force a resolution without starting a shooting war a blockade is quite cost effective.

And it's not all that huge. Real-world spacecraft orbit earth once every 45 minutes or so. So if you take say... a half dozen capital ships and lay out their orbits with some thought you'd probably be able to get reasonable coverage. Toss in sensor buoys and probe droids to fill in gaps, and fighter groups and patrol boats to do rapid reaction, and you'd have a respectable chance of intercepting most craft. You'd still have the occasional blockade runner of course, but one CR90 a week can't feed a planet.

And I didn't even mention mines.

Right, but we are talking about a planet, not a small island nation.

I find it very hard to believe that a planet that's developed hyperspace capable ships, wouldn't also have developed, like... space agriculture.

The WEG rules – where this whole thing comes from, because it's not in the films – always struck me as, "I can't realistically stop the players from doing what I don't want them to, so I'll just punish them. That will teach them."

I've never seen that attitude make a game more fun, though I have seen it do the opposite.

So the "modern" lightsaber is ~4800 years old by the setting of EotE. How many Jedi do you think went through the whole make your first saber ritual? Voice gave the numbers of "100,000,000,000,000,000 sentient beings vs. 1,000,000 Jedi". But how many is that a year? 1,000 a year 100,000? Let's say 50,000 that's 240,000,000 lightsabers created over that period of time. We've seen things like holocrons last thousands of years, so I don't see them all being broken relics. Even if they've got a shelf life of 1000 to 2000 years, that's still ~100,000,000 lightsabers. I just don't see the Empire expending the resources needed to track down ever single lightsaber. The lightsaber isn't the problem for the Empire, it's only when a Jedi wields one that its an issue. It's much more cost efficient to just track down reports of some crazy dude with a glow stick than hunt down every lightsaber ever made.

You're not going to find them at every Mos Espa pawn shop, but finding one seems closer to a needle in a haystack than a needle in the Sahara. And that's just to find a lightsaber, learning to use it is a whole different kettle of fish.

Even with those numbers, that's 2.4 lightsabers per *billion* non-droid, sapient beings in the galaxy. Assuming they all survive in working order with little/no maintenance over those thousands of years.

The recharging argument doesn't hold up when the Death Star gets used to take shots at individual capital ships...that's going to be dozens of shots.

Death Star 1 took *hours* (12, IIRC) to recharge between full-power, planet-killing shots. Taking a shot at Yavin itself would simply give the Rebels most of a day to escape (assuming the moon survived the destruction of it's planet). Waiting the 1/2 hour to orbit the planet so you can directly fire upon the moon is *much* faster than that. As others have mentioned, DS1 was a weapon of terror, not one of war.

Death Star 2 could fire full-power *or* low-power shots, which made it practical and useful to fire at capital ships during the Battle of Endor. This iteration was still a weapon of terror, but it was *also* a somewhat practical weapon of war.

Screw lightsabers and Deathstars. What we really need is a Deathstar sized lightsaber.

You mean the Darksaber?