As for why the Empire built a Death Star rather then launching such attacks my best guess is they wanted a way to destroy worlds which couldn't be easily turned against them. The Empire starts hyperspacing ships into worlds and it is easy for any rebels to decide the only way to win is to hit back in kind and things get very ugly very quickly

Your arguments are not consistent with the canon or even each other.

Lots of possibilities. The first three that come to mind

1: The rebels don't like ordering suicide missions

There's no need to order that mission. Strap an R2 unit in and let it do the job.

As for why the Empire built a Death Star rather then launching such attacks my best guess is they wanted a way to destroy worlds which couldn't be easily turned against them. The Empire starts hyperspacing ships into worlds and it is easy for any rebels to decide the only way to win is to hit back in kind and things get very ugly very quickly

So you're saying that if the Empire blows up planets using suicide hyperspace attacks, the rebels would do the same. But if the Empire blows up planets using a massive superweapon, the rebels would just go "Fair enough, well played" and not reply the only way they can?

Your arguments are not consistent with the canon or even each other.

Remember the Alliance does not want to destroy any planets. The scenario where they do so is one where they become so desperate that they are convinced they have no other choice which is something that never happened in canon or in Legends. What causes them to reach that level of desperation can vary. The Death Star's Survival or the Empire using ships as hyperspace missiles are both examples of stituations that could push the rebels past that desperation threshold.

As for why the Empire built a Death Star rather then launching such attacks my best guess is they wanted a way to destroy worlds which couldn't be easily turned against them. The Empire starts hyperspacing ships into worlds and it is easy for any rebels to decide the only way to win is to hit back in kind and things get very ugly very quickly

So you're saying that if the Empire blows up planets using suicide hyperspace attacks, the rebels would do the same. But if the Empire blows up planets using a massive superweapon, the rebels would just go "Fair enough, well played" and not reply the only way they can?

Your arguments are not consistent with the canon or even each other.

Remember the Alliance does not want to destroy any planets. The scenario where they do so is one where they become so desperate that they are convinced they have no other choice which is something that never happened in canon or in Legends. What causes them to reach that level of desperation can vary. The Death Star's Survival or the Empire using ships as hyperspace missiles are both examples of stituations that could push the rebels past that desperation threshold.

Ok, so you're backing down from your assertion that the Rebels would not use droid-based fighter suicides to take out Imperial planets if the Death Star came into play. What that still does not answer is:

1. Why the Rebels wouldn't just use the droid-guided hyperspace bomb to take out the Death Star

2. Why the Empire would bother with a Death Star when they already have the ability to destroy a planet.

I prefer to just ignore the stupidity of mindless cartoon writers and instead stick with the self-coherent universe that we have within the old EU.

Because one of these things dont invalidate the narrative of the freakkin' original movies. Jedi Crash completely undermines the potency of the Empire developping planetbusting weaponry.

I prefer to just ignore the stupidity of mindless cartoon writers and instead stick with the self-coherent universe that we have within the old EU.

Because one of these things dont invalidate the narrative of the freakkin' original movies. Jedi Crash completely undermines the potency of the Empire developping planetbusting weaponry.

Even as someone who likes the EU it's ridiculous to say it's coherent. Also Wookiepedia suggested that the point of the Death Star was that it could breach planetary shields (whereas hyperspace bombing couldn't).

Actually, we can make it even simpler: the Fatal Encounters sidebar on page 261 of the AoR Core book.

It states that while there are numerous failsafes on hyperdrives, they can fail and land the ship inside a planet or star, this "spells certain death for the starship and anyone aboard." Note the lack of "..and everyone else in the same system/planet."

If that's not enough, it goes on to note that "In certain, very rare cases the starship can come out of hyperspace too close to a planets surface and crash at dangerous speeds. This could even do considerable damage if it has the misfortune of impacting a city or other population center." (Emphasis mine)

This pretty much settles it: a ship that hypers into a star or planet is destroyed, no further effect. A ship that exits hyperspace at high speed just outside of a city can do massive destruction to the city.

The Rebels don't do it because they're not terrorists.

The Empire doesn't do it because a Star Destroyer can do the same job with planetary bombardment in half an hour without wasting a perfectly good ship.

Interesting. I wonder what the AOR book based its data off of since we have never seen such a collision in canon and the one time we saw it in Legends had a much different effect then in the rulebook.

Interesting. I wonder what the AOR book based its data off of since we have never seen such a collision in canon and the one time we saw it in Legends had a much different effect then in the rulebook.

Common sense and verisimilitude. A universe where weapons of planetary mass destruction are cheap and easily accessible to the general populous would look vastly different from the Star Wars universe we know and love.

Not necessarily. You have to have someone willing to use them who has the knowledge needed to bypass the safeties, or allies with that knowledge and even small capital ships don't come cheap

Not necessarily. You have to have someone willing to use them who has the knowledge needed to bypass the safeties, or allies with that knowledge and even small capital ships don't come cheap

I fail to see how you can some how reason that the Rebels would just magically have not only someone willing to do it, in a world with an active Death Star, but also the knowledge and ships to crash them into Corucsant but somehow no one else has this knowledge and now all of a sudden it is something that requires the know how to bypass safeties and allies with ships and knowledge.

If we are to assume that the Rebels could do it out of desperation then we can assume that anyone could have done it. And as such Galth's observations hold true. But you can't have it both ways. It can't be so secretive that others don't know how to use it and do it but not so secretive that it becomes the Rebels desperation plan.

I was going to drop out of this discussion entirely seeing as the proponents of the counter-view are contradicting themselves from post to post and ignoring actual counter-points. However, seeing a few others bravely still battling on, I'll just add a note about "Jedi Crash" the episode of TCW which has been several times been cited by RogueCorona. It contains nothing that supports their position. We see a battle taking place high above a planet (at one point the Jedi captain says "we're entering their atmosphere" and you see a re-entry glow start to appear above them. They then escape onto another ship which flies away from that one up to dock with another capital ship higher up. Due to damage, they accidentally go into hyperspace whilst docking with this second ship. So firstly, this episode contributes nothing to any notion of "safeties", flying whilst in a "mass-shadow" or anything remotely of that kind.

Because they went into hyperspace involuntarily without properly setting coordinates, they find that they're going to fly into a star. Nothing at all is said about the specifics of what effect this would have, nor reference to damaging anything else, we just know that it is being treated as a prospect of dying by the crew. In fact, there's no indication that there are any "safeties" that will drop them out of hyperspace at all seeing as the only thing that actually stops them flying into the star is that they manually shut down all power so that they drop out of hyperspace. The fact that they're going to fly into a star is explicitly stated to be because in their hasty departure proper co-ordinates were not entered.

In short, this episodes contributes absolutely nothing whatsoever towards RogueCorona's position and in fact undermines it by showing they have no "safeties" in the way that RogueCorona keeps babbling on about. Again, I consider some people here to be arguing in bad faith. Or possibly outright trolling.

Oh, and I believe the term that was wanted was self-consistent or possibly just coherent, but not self-coherent which is senseless. But neither self-consistent nor coherent remotely describe the EU.

<sarcasm>Right because I'm sure everyone in Star Wars has the knowledge needed to bypass a hyperdrive's safety system. Just like how everyone knows how to take apart and modify a ship's engine IRL.</sarcasm>

At the least you would need extensive starship engineering knowledge. Hell it wouldn't surprise me if most people in the Star Wars setting that aren't familiar with hyperdrive design or ship engineering honestly believe believe that the gravity well limit is the result of a physical law rather then a safety system. You also need that person to be willing to carry out the modifications, a ship large enough to make the effort worth it, and someone willing to launch such an attack.

On another matter has anything explained what destroyed Anaxes in canon? It would seem to be near the power of a Death Star at least but happened far too soon and it wouldn't make sense for the Empire to do it IMO.

Edit: knasserll Interdictors are now canon.

Legends states that Interdictors work by triggering a safety in a hyperdrive designed to stop them from crashing into Stars, planets, and black holes and provides examples of what happens should the safeties fail.

The episode Jedi Crash,proves that a gravity well doesn't physically prevent a ship from entering hyperspace or force one out of hyperspace. Thus everything shown in Jedi Crash supports my point. If Interdictirs weren't canon you would have a point but they are.

Perhaps you have some explanation for how a ship with a damaged hyperdrive and nav system can jump inside the outer edge of a planet's atmosphere and fly into a star without being effected by its gravity yet ones with working nav systems are forced out of hyperspace by Interdictors projecting gravity wells that doesn't involve some kind of connection between the ship sensing the gravity well and then automactically cutting power to the hyperdrive in response?

Edit 2: I just re watched Jedi Crash. They were clearly not in outer space when they jumped. I'm guessing probably in the exosphere or upper thermosphere. Even the behind the scenes section of the episode's Wookieepedia page points out that normally the jump would be impossible because of the gravity well and how Interdictors work by simulating gravity wells to prevent jumps. Which makes more sense the ship in question having a special hyperdrive which ignores the rules that bind others, the planet somehow not having the gravity to stop the jump inside its atmosphere, or that the no jumping in a gravity well is a safety feature not a physical law of hyperspace travel and the safety was knocked out by battle damage? And the last is also consistent with how hyperspace travel is shown in Legends.

First off regarding that episode by the time they even realised there was a problem they would have all been dead, the entire point is that they wouldn't have known they were heading directly for that star until they dropped out of hyperspace.

What you are suggesting is doing so deliberately an act, like the Death Star's super laser is seriously idiotic.

Can it be done?

Yes, would they do it?

Unless the Emperor was able to retain control quite possibly, would he?

Unless he was stark raving mad then no.

The moment he demonstrates that ability you can count on someone reverse engineering it and using it on them after all the only world safe from that kind of idiocy is one the Empire doesn't know about and the Rebel Fleet might end up being the Rebel Sanctuary to ensure they don't pull that off!

The Death Star's true role would be more of a roving mobile carrier capable of carrying and supporting a literal armada into the far recesses of the Galaxy and beyond if necessary given enough time and resources the Empire would have secured their millennia plus reign but not through blowing up planets... imagine those IMPs You tube video's now imagine instead of star destroyers' they fielded Death Stars instead combine that with interdictor technology and you've got a pretty nigh on indestructible task force requiring onboard sabotage to even threaten it.

And what thwarted this development?

Tarkin allowed his personal feelings get in the way of his usual ruthlessness and targeted an otherwise harmless world, now imagine if he had gone after something more tangible like Dac, lord knows he could have targeted former Separatist worlds citing the ongoing war which they were clearly using to perpetuate the Emperor's reign after all he has secured the Core Worlds its really only the Outer Rim he needs to worry about!

As far as using Hyperspace projectiles that's something only a lunatic would bother with, wasn't that introduced in Empire's End in the old EU?

Sorry about self-coherent, i provably didn't think too long about my word choice.

But the argument stands regarding the EU and its coherence with the movies. If anyone with a minimal know-how can bypass a safety feature so weak that it was previously bypass by accident, and that this bypass allow the same destructive capability as a Death Star, for all effective purposes, then what is so bloody important about the Death Star?!

Thats what i meant about coherence. Ya know; not trying to issue a position that undermines the very freakkin movies of the Original Trilogy.

<sarcasm>Right because I'm sure everyone in Star Wars has the knowledge needed to bypass a hyperdrive's safety system. Just like how everyone knows how to take apart and modify a ship's engine IRL.</sarcasm>

At the least you would need extensive starship engineering knowledge. Hell it wouldn't surprise me if most people in the Star Wars setting that aren't familiar with hyperdrive design or ship engineering honestly believe believe that the gravity well limit is the result of a physical law rather then a safety system. You also need that person to be willing to carry out the modifications, a ship large enough to make the effort worth it, and someone willing to launch such an attack.

So the Empire is now building a mobile battle station the size of a small moon and the Rebels are stealing technical readouts at great cost and searching for weakpoints in it because nobody knows that hyperspace can be used as a weapon and they can't find anyone willing to carry out the engine modifications to do so. When are you going to admit that you're just guessing at anything from post to post that you think might justify your position.

Edit: knasserll Interdictors are now canon.

Legends states that Interdictors work by triggering a safety in a hyperdrive designed to stop them from crashing into Stars, planets, and black holes and provides examples of what happens should the safeties fail.

And there you go, using things from the EU again to justify your position.

The episode Jedi Crash,proves that a gravity well doesn't physically prevent a ship from entering hyperspace or force one out of hyperspace. Thus everything shown in Jedi Crash supports my point. If Interdictirs weren't canon you would have a point but they are.

Perhaps you have some explanation for how a ship with a damaged hyperdrive and nav system can jump inside the outer edge of a planet's atmosphere and fly into a star without being effected by its gravity yet ones with working nav systems are forced out of hyperspace by Interdictors projecting gravity wells that doesn't involve some kind of connection between the ship sensing the gravity well and then automactically cutting power to the hyperdrive in response?

At this point you're just making things up to suit yourself. No such thing happens in the episode Jedi Crash. The ship that is entering the planet's atmosphere (and that's all that it does, btw), is not the ship that they jump from. They escape from that one and fly up to a ship that is higher up and not in the planet's atmosphere. Whilst they're docking with that ship is when they enter hyperspace. Nor does it say anything about destroying a planet in either case. This isn't even a case of your logic being terrible by this point, you're actually inventing things that didn't happen.

Edit 2: I just re watched Jedi Crash. They were clearly not in outer space when they jumped. I'm guessing probably in the exosphere or upper thermosphere. Even the behind the scenes section of the episode's Wookieepedia page points out that normally the jump would be impossible because of the gravity well and how Interdictors work by simulating gravity wells to prevent jumps. Which makes more sense the ship in question having a special hyperdrive which ignores the rules that bind others, the planet somehow not having the gravity to stop the jump inside its atmosphere, or that the no jumping in a gravity well is a safety feature not a physical law of hyperspace travel and the safety was knocked out by battle damage? And the last is also consistent with how hyperspace travel is shown in Legends.

I don't recognize Wookipedia as any kind of authoritative source and you seem unable to recognize the difference between arguing something based on evidence and assuming the conclusion you want and inventing rationalizations why it could be so.

First off regarding that episode by the time they even realised there was a problem they would have all been dead, the entire point is that they wouldn't have known they were heading directly for that star until they dropped out of hyperspace.

They do realize they're going to hit the star whilst in hyperspace. They see it on their scanners and that they're on a collision course and state that unless they can bring the ship out of hyperspace, they're going to hit it. Nobody makes any mention of safeties and by implication there are none.

What you are suggesting is doing so deliberately an act, like the Death Star's super laser is seriously idiotic.

I can't understand this sentence.

Can it be done?

Yes, would they do it?

Unless the Emperor was able to retain control quite possibly, would he?

Unless he was stark raving mad then no.

The moment he demonstrates that ability you can count on someone reverse engineering it and using it on them after all the only world safe from that kind of idiocy is one the Empire doesn't know about and the Rebel Fleet might end up being the Rebel Sanctuary to ensure they don't pull that off!

The Death Star's true role would be more of a roving mobile carrier capable of carrying and supporting a literal armada into the far recesses of the Galaxy and beyond if necessary given enough time and resources the Empire would have secured their millennia plus reign but not through blowing up planets... imagine those IMPs You tube video's now imagine instead of star destroyers' they fielded Death Stars instead combine that with interdictor technology and you've got a pretty nigh on indestructible task force requiring onboard sabotage to even threaten it.

And what thwarted this development?

Tarkin allowed his personal feelings get in the way of his usual ruthlessness and targeted an otherwise harmless world, now imagine if he had gone after something more tangible like Dac, lord knows he could have targeted former Separatist worlds citing the ongoing war which they were clearly using to perpetuate the Emperor's reign after all he has secured the Core Worlds its really only the Outer Rim he needs to worry about!

As far as using Hyperspace projectiles that's something only a lunatic would bother with, wasn't that introduced in Empire's End in the old EU?

Half of that is almost unintelligible to me and a good portion of the rest is nothing I've ever seen in canon. As far as I can work out you're saying that eh Empire wouldn't use hyperspace attacks because it could be reverse engineered by the Rebels once they realized it was possible. So you're suggesting that the entire galaxy is currently building these "safeties" that you both keep going on about without actually knowing why they're doing so? It's just something that they build and add to every hyperspace engine for fun until the Empire shows that crashing into something at hyperspace is a planet-destroying weapon? I don't get this at all.

<sarcasm>Right because I'm sure everyone in Star Wars has the knowledge needed to bypass a hyperdrive's safety system. Just like how everyone knows how to take apart and modify a ship's engine IRL.</sarcasm>

Actually, quite a few people have the know how to take apart and modify the engines on the cars and boats that they own. And quite a few more actually make a living at it. When a psychotic mechanic who's had a bad day can take his starfighter and a droid, aim it at whatever planet he doesn't like, and destroy it, how can you even pretend that would be a setting that looks like Star Wars? It would be like if any car mechanic today could rig a common consumer car into a 100 megaton nuke.

And you don't even need that car knowledge yourself! You can buy (or even steal!) a droid with the required mechanical knowledge to do it AND carry out the deed to boot. It;s not like he can say no, he's a bloody droid.

At the least you would need extensive starship engineering knowledge. Hell it wouldn't surprise me if most people in the Star Wars setting that aren't familiar with hyperdrive design or ship engineering honestly believe believe that the gravity well limit is the result of a physical law rather then a safety system.

Are you seriously suggesting that hyperdrives are any more mysterious than car engines are to the people of the star universe?

Yes, there's a lot of people who don't know how cars work. But the information is out there, a lot of people make a living fixing said engines, and droids can be purchased with this knowledge. Don't pretend that this is some esoteric lore, here.

You also need that person to be willing to carry out the modifications

If it's me, or a droid, they're willing. Or I could fool someone into showing me how the safeties work while under the pretense of "Ok, what should I avoid if i don't want to accidentally disable the safeties."

a ship large enough to make the effort worth it

You've already established that a starfighter-sized ship is sufficient to destroy a planet, don't backpedal now. And it's not hard for a civilian to purchase and pilot a light freighter, either.

and someone willing to launch such an attack.

Are you ever going to admit that a droid can be made to do the attack, or will you keep ignoring this point?

The argument about safeties isn't even relevant, because there's ZERO evidence for and pretty much all the plot of the first and third movies AGAINST the notion that you can turn a common civilian craft into a world-ending nuke with a little mechanical expertise.

And the cherry on the top is that the system we're all playing explicitly lays out what happens in these scenarios, and yet we're still somehow having this discussion.

And I'm going to really finish this time. I don't see this discussion being profitable any further and will probably just end with hurt feelings.

Peace and coolness,

K.

If you want to make a case regarding a starship crashing devastating a whole planet, there's a few good examples of that. Honorogh (Noghri homeworld).

Hell. The authors of Jedi Crash could have just made a few twists to their stupid script to make sure we witness the actual Devastation of Honorogh, instead of the stupid PlanetBreak even relayed by Corona.

Everything would have flowed seemlessly. Hust make a case that the crashed ship, the Praetor-class supercruiser, was a high-tech behemot with unstable prototype reactors that devastated the atmosphere of the planet, and everyone think the local population is dead from the effect.

Would have been a perfect wink to the Legends without any stupid story element that destroys the universe's narrative.

Make it about the radiation and chemicals unleashed, for God's sake. Not a "blow so hard it cuts the planet in half!" Nonesense.

One big issue I have with AOR's explanation of what happens when a ship hypers out and crashes into a planet is its too vague. A Starship could be anything from a YT-130 to a Star Destroyer size vessel and I don't see any reasonable way for there not to be a huge difference in the damage inflicted by such vessels. Hell an ISD would inflict vastly more damage then a smaller capital ship like a CR90 reasonably.

A Starship could be anything from a YT-130 to a Star Destroyer size vessel and I don't see any reasonable way for there not to be a huge difference in the damage inflicted by such vessels.

Probably the same reason the Death Star blowing up didn't wipe out all life on Endor.

The debris or most of it burning up in atmosphere with no chunks hitting the ground large enough to inflict major damage like at Endor doesn't seem likely to apply here.

http://www.theforce.net/swtc/holocaust.html

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Endor_Holocaust

Actually, the debris should have destroyed all (or at least most) life on Endor. The writers had to make the explosion somehow have a wormhole suck up most of the ejected mass in order to make the story (that Endor wasn't wiped out accidentally by Rebel military action) plausible. Pablo Hidalgo, the guy who works on Lucasfilm Story Group (the group that manages canon in Star Wars), said that the laws of physics can be thrown out for the sake of the story. Which is how Star Wars(and a great deal other sci fi works) has always been.

The reason hyperspacing common ships into a planet doesn't wipe it out is because it would make for a bad story.

The reason hyperspacing common ships into a planet doesn't wipe it out is because it would make for a bad story.

Except in this case physics and storytelling agree (probably).

The reason hyperspacing common ships into a planet doesn't wipe it out is because it would make for a bad story.

Except in this case physics and storytelling agree (probably).

Honestly, the "physics" involved in hyperspace tech is so far removed from reality that saying physics agrees with anything related to it is a huge stretch.

Hyperdrives accomplish whatever writers want them to accomplish. It's the same reason that Luke and Han didn't experience time dilation when they went to Alderaan: hyperspace is magic that does what the writers want it to do.