ST Starkiller Base Discussion Thread

Man it's good to be back....

On topic now... I guess it's better to say I didn't HATE Starkiller Base... which is to say that as an engineer I saw Starkiller Base as a natural progression from the Death Star. No points for originality or ingenuity, but it would naturally progress that a weapon like the Death Star would be further developed as a "successful" design into a larger more powerful weapon...

 

Yeah, I mean I didn't like starkiller base from a cinematic point of view but darn I have to admit it is realistic. Once this technology was discovered, OF COURSE rogue nations and terrorist elements and even governments would pursue making their own. It's just so believable.

As if nobody in the galaxy would ever ever try to replicate the death star ever again. Cmon, that would be MORE unrealistic actually.

My final verdict: lazy from a behind the scenes filmmaking perspective but 100% believable in-universe.

 

Starkiller Base comes across as a parody in a boring, redundant movie.

 

The broken fragments of the Empire are somehow able to create a superweapon that is approximately a gazillion times bigger and betterrer than the Death Star. This time it doesn't just shoot one planet destroying laser beam, but multiple. The whole thing sounds like something out of a five year old's fanfiction.

 

This is not the "Let's bash TFA" thread. The incendiary rhetoric is unnecessary.

 

In universe I don't see how it was believable. Yes, technology propagates. But using the nuclear analogy, this is something like the leap from the fission to the fusion bomb. Except here, they are positing that it was masterminded by a fringe political organization that had only a fraction of the resources of its predecessor. Also, that it in making a whole planet, rather than a planetoid-sized station, it was able to build something hugely more complex and expensive. Evne more incredibly still, they somehow completed this entire construction project--including testing and development--without the New Republic having any hint of what they were up to. In light of all that, it really doesn't seem very plausible to me in universe.

Out of universe, it was just a recycled idea. I wish they had done something different.

 

I love TFA but having another Death Star like thing was lazy. I did like the fact that Starkiller Base drained stars of their energy. They should've only stuck with that. Starkiller Base could go to each system and drain their suns. Thus killing the planets that revolve around it and making them virtually inhabitable. Everyone on the planet would be forced to evacuate the planet they lived on. That's honestly more interesting. They just took it too far and had it blow up planets too.

 

What would have made it unequivocally better, IMO, was making it's "devouring of stars" capability the end point. Because I like that aspect of it on a visual/ mythical level. Space Ungoliant (http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Ungoliant)

I just don't like that aspect of it as a "charge" for another super-laser.

In this case, it could have sauntered over to the sun at the center of the Hosnian system, and killed it. All while the Resistance/ Republic Fleet try to bring it down. This plunges the system into a freeze, and plunges the galaxy into political turmoil.

ETA: I see QsAssistant just said the exact same thing.

 

I didn't really like Starkiller much either...but if it was just something that drained stars and left the surrounding planets uninhabitable, that really wouldn't have been nearly as menacing.

 

It would be if you dramatized the chaotic evacuation of planet(s) as the sun winks out, with the First Order shooting down transports, etc. Sorry, but destroying a sun is menacing, no matter how you square it.

 

Yeah, I was just thinking about that the other day. It's even called Starkiller.

 

Agreed 100%. It would have been much better to just destroy a systems star, you know starkiller base and all.
Besides if this thing drains a star, wouldn’t it have to travel to different stars to re fuel like a one off, until it can be recharged?
Also how did it destroy the Hosian system? What star did it drain?

Sheesh so many flaws with this stupid weapon!

 

I never understood that
The Resistance is a informal group and no the army of the New Republic how as such a small group could destroy a space station morer superior and bigger to the Death Star?

And how The First Order obtained the necessary resources to create a new Death Star more bigger than the Death Star of the original Empire?

 

The Empire were the ones who took a planetoid with lots of kyber crystals, and started experimenting, planning on developing a new superweapon. The First Order just inherited the Empire's work, and built on it. It's not so much a space station, as a highly modified, small, planetoid.

The First Order is also a lot bigger than the Republic thinks they are, controlling a lot of territory in the Unknown Regions. The Republic only knows about a few worlds within Republic territory that seceded and started calling themselves the First Order. Thus, the Republic thinks they are small, when in fact they are large.

In TFA, we find that even Starkiller Base has a weakness - a power regulator, which, if destroyed, results in the superweapon no longer being able to control its own power, which gets released, destroying it.

 

I imagine building within a planet rather than constructing an interstellar vehicle platform for it offset the demands of the hyperspace weapon on resources etc.

All super weapons are flawed though. The flaw with the SKB was exposed the moment it was fired. The way that it drew on energy from a star and had an infrastructure that was difficult to defend (without shields), was its downfall. Plus the Resistance had brave people willing to sacrifice themselves in order to destroy it.

 

So, it appears Finn told them about the Starkiller. Then some Snap (apparently J. J.'s friend) went on a reconnaissance flight and gathered some data; it's a hyper lightspeed weapon within a planet. Then, which is absurd, they spend time on comparing to ANH's Death Star, Finn explains them how it works (lucky he was there), they find out it's charging again and the Resistance is the next target (I can't really tell how Leia knows this). There's a guy who says it has to have some sort of thermal oscillator, Finn shows it. And a sentence-two later (destroying the oscillator will destroy the planet) they decide to disable the shields. Han will do it.

There's, of course, no mention of possible fleet guarding the planet, as Snap would've told them.

So, Han knows that their shields have a fractional refresh rate so if you travel faster than light, you may get in. How Han got the information about the shields, I don't know. They make Phasma lower the shields, Poe's squadron exits the hyperspace a moment later, they attack the target without any obstacles and after the aerial fight starts, helped with explosions set by the ground crew, they manage to pass the trench run, enter the oscillator and destroy it, as well as Starkiller.

The Resistance destroyed the Starkiller in a matter of hours upon finding about it's existence. The renegade stormtrooper helped them, as well the fact that Kylo's stardestroyer was conveniently absent during the battle.

How the FO managed to build the base, I doubt we'll ever know, as the movie never bothered to establish how big the FO really is.

 

Funny, Kylo's Star Destroyer disappears just like those multiple droid control ships orbiting Naboo in TPM, conviently leaving one a single one to be accidentally destroyed, winning the day. SKB even has an obvious weakness like the earlier Death Stars. I guess TFA is a Star Wars film afterall.

 

There's also the pinpoint,.first hand intelligence from an FO defector. An original concept for Star Wars movies. So it's "win-win".

 

For me, "suspension of disbelief" is a tricky thing that almost defies logical discussion. I'll be watching a superhero movie in which almost every moment contains wild leaps of unreality, and then some small thing will happen, a character will do or say something, and some part of me goes "Nah, not buying that - sure, up until this point I have bought into people flying, super strength, people surviving ridiculous G forces, but her going into that apartment alone? Nope. Not buying it".... Other times, I suspect I go along with stuff for the sheer COOLNESS of them, although the thought process isn't that coldly logical, that overt. For example, do "walkers" make any sense, in the SW universe? I tend to think they don't, but some part of me just doesn't care..they LOOK so cool, I just enjoy them. But if someone didn't, couldn't get past their implausibility, I couldn't really argue with them. What I am trying to say - badly I suspect - is that "suspension of disbelief" is a tricky, weird, personal thing.

Which brings me to Starkiller Base.

First off, destroying entire planets would be a great weapon of terror and intimidation (for an evil, amoral power, mind you!) and at times useful militarily, but overall, I'd think it would be kind of wasteful. All those resources and populations lost - instead of conquered and exploited! And why is it that we never see atomic weapons or the like in SW movies (and almost no bombing, apart from, I think, that TIE bomber in Empire?)...? I mean, the 'test shot' in ROGUE...might as well have been an H bomb, no? But what "fun" would it be to have the SW movies feature "atomic weapons" (or something like them)? It's a lot more fun, more "Flash Gordon", for the bad guys to have a giant space cannon that can blow away entire planets in a single shot, isn't it?


And for me, I guess that is kind of "it". You find the Death Star(s) or Starkiller Base illogical? I can't really argue with you. You find the attacks by what amount to WW2 fighter aircraft illogical? Yeah, again - but at the same time, very cool to see, much more personal than firing 'stand off" weapons from a zillion miles away, right? I think that is true of a lot of the SW universe - and that's not a criticism. A certain amount of the universe ain't logical, not entirely, but for the most part, it sure IS cool...if you are lucky enough that it works for you.

 

SHAD0W-JEDI, yeah, I hear what you're saying. And you haven't even mentioned lightsabers. How much sense do those make, really? But they're cool, so they get a pass.

 

I do not like SK. First, it was lazy to have a 3rd superweapon in TFA, the film would have been better with 0 superweapons. Second, a planet would have a lot more mass than a large battle station and would be more difficult to move. Third, they should have chosen a planet without an atmosphere to avoid weathering of the infrastructure. Fourth, characters being able to watch SK beans blowing up other planets in real time was stupid.

 

No, it was some weird-ass hyperspace-rip seen-across-the-cosmos kinda ****.
Just ask Pablo Hidalgo