Books Canon "Complete Locations"

Shielding is equivalent to the power of a medium star. That's the only thing I could find (the new book is sadly not in store yet). So that's where 3,8 × 1026 W is extrapolated from. The total power is probably based on the now-Legends ROTS:ICS for an older Star Dreadnought model.

 

Not a big difference between the two from a quick glance. The opening paragraph is a little bit longer in the original, mainly talking about the "terror" aesthetic used in Kuati designs. The reactor having the power of a medium star was changed to as you mention above, to nicely being just a very powerful reactor. Not too many changes to the picture captions. Then the biggest change was the paragraph about Super Star Destroyers. The old one mentioned the history behind the design of the Executor, and that Super Star Destroyer pretty much covers all ships larger than a Star Destroyer, like Star Cruisers and Star Dreadnoughts.

 

And the new one?

 

No reason they couldn't have used both types. But it's a small nitpick.

 

Same basic things from a few pages back, at least 12 Executor's, along the lines of what Life Debt mentioned, though a potential for others built in secret, plus basically other ships larger than an ISD can also refereed to as a Super Star Destroyer.

 

Hope to pick this up by next week off Amazon. Seems really interesting with all the little tidbits revealed in it.

 

At least part of my reason for picking it up was that I'd never gotten the original.

 

Seeing that I do have the original, I'm holding out for the post-IX version...or at least a digital option so I'm not committing to 50 pounds of book.

 

Yeah, I also don't have the original. So will be ordering this tomorrow!

 

For some reason, I'm sad that Kitik the Yam'rii isn't mentioned anymore on the Cantina spread. Always was fond of the giant mantis.

 

Haven't got the CL yet, sadly. However, I think the DS sizes are arbitrary and based on not so good research. In a late-production drawing by Ralph McQuarrie (which was also published in the digital enhanced edition of Rinzler's The Making of Star Wars), he had calculated a size for the Death Star of 92 miles (148 km) in diameter with the equatorial trench being, IIRC, one mile (1.609 km) tall (it was mentioned somewhere that McQuarrie calculated the minimum size for when the DS surface would appear as a flat plane from a given height and my guess, though I can't prove it, is that the sizes in that drawing came from that).

During the production of ROTJ, the F/X-makers of course could work better with the scale. As Richard Edlund put it in CINEFEX 1983:

The Death Star was described as being the size 'of a small moon' and Starkiller Base is constantly being referred to as a 'planet'. With the DS at 120 and 160 km, they're really the size of large asteroids or tiny moons. For example, the Saturn moon of Enceladus is described as being 'small sized' at 500 km in diameter. At 660 km in diameter, the Starkiller Base planet would be half the size of Pluto's moon Charon (but with an eco system and gravity to boot).

I can understand why the size difference between 120 km (or 150 km really) and 800 km can be jarring, but I think Edlund already solved the issue back in 1983: It's difficult to grasp the scale of the DS in ANH, I think the wiser course of action would have been to have adjusted the size to fit the size which the DS II was designed to be at instead (and which it's clear it is). Then we could have had the DS the size of a 'small moon' and the Starkiller Base planet the size of a small (Mercury-sized) planet.

Anyway, looking forward to it! Should have gotten it last week...

 

Sarcasm? I mean you are still trying to reconcile one Canon universe.

I guess you can't really workaround stated sizes.

 

RotJ Sketchbook book gave 160km for DS2, RotJ novelization gave "nearly twice as big (as the DS1)" for the DS2 - the EU just took those and ran with them.

120km was as big as you could get and still have the 160km DS2 qualify as "nearly twice as big" (by volume when complete).

"Tiny moon" I'd say fits Phobos and Deimos better. Being much bigger than either of those, the Death Stars edge into "small moon" territory. Taking into account the fact that the vast majority of "moons" in our solar system are vastly smaller than Enceladus - it's not all that small by Solar System Moon standards.

Plus - they reused a lot of data the EU had established for planetoid sizes. Forest Moon of Endor is 4900 km diameter - for any of the movie shots to "work" that necessitates a DS2 much smaller than 900 km.

I agree that it's odd that something as small as Starkiller Base is habitable, with its own forests - it's much smaller than any previously established habitable body (Mustafar, Iego, Forest Moon, etc) and thus was probably terraformed in some way.

In the context of "reusing EU data" - it makes sense for them to stick with the Death Star Owners Workshop Manual retcon, and carry the data from that over to the newcanon.

 

Which the later Cinefax-interview corrects to "over 500 miles in diameter". C.Saxton offers the explenation for the 160km from the ROTJ Sketchbook as the model-makers originally wanting to make DS2 at least as big as DS1.

Actually they botched the job on both accounts. With 4900 km diameter Endor is only a handful of kilometres larger than Merkur (4879 km). Why there is even an atmosphere and the protagonists don't make five metre-jumps with every step if Endor is only 4900 km in diameter hasn't been explained yet. It would have been better to give Endor a more credible size (perhaps by replacing the 4900 km with 4900 miles, so it would be at least Mars-sized) and also allowed them to keep the larger DS2 from Cinefax.

A habitable Starkiller Base at 660 klicks is even more ridicilous than a 4900 km large Endor. And if the habitable surface is artificial the question is: who did it and why. Especially since the planet in its original state was isolated, uninhabited by sentient life and only known to a few beings. I can't see the FirstOrder terraforming the planet just so its personnel can take breaks for a smoke.

What they did was restart a debate, that had been concluded in the EU with the publication of the IncredibleCrossSections and Inside the Worlds/CompleteLocations-books.

 

If it was Ilum itself - the Jedi Order could have organized it (in its ancient days when they first invented lightsabers using Ilum crystals in the first place) - before deleting the planet from the Republic's archives to keep it isolated.

Considering astronauts never made 5 meter jumps with every step on the Moon - it's not that hard to explain. Plus, a body the size of Endor, made of iron, would have a surface gravity significantly higher than Mars's and close to Earth's - reduce it just a little to account for a few km of surface crust - and you have something like Endor. Add in heavier metals like iridium (in higher quantities than is normal on Earth) and the core itself can be a little smaller.

The physics of planets may also be slightly different - as demonstrated by worlds like Concord Dawn and Lola Sayu - in both cases, half the planet is missing, and yet it does not collapse under gravity back into a spherical shape - and the atmosphere is still breathable despite whatever catastrophes damaged those planets.

Saxton fans thought it had been concluded. Fans of other books (like The Essential Atlas), probably thought some of Saxton's decisions needed changing.


Seems to me that whoever's in charge of the newcanon (Pablo? Leland?) - they must like works like The Essential Atlas - since a lot of the planet descriptions and data in the front of the newcanon Complete Locations, seem like copypastes from it.

 

What did the EA say about the Death Stars? Why is Pablo and co interested in contradicting ILM when they're such a big fan of the movies and the movie-making and minutiae?

 

It didn't - but it did give the 4900km figure (repeated from one of the Roleplaying games) - and all the planet sizes and descriptions in Complete Locations seem to match up closely to the planet sections of The Essential Atlas.

Maybe because ILM interviews that contradict long-established EU data, are fair game for retcons?

Maybe we could move on from Death Stars - and see what else has been changed in the changeover from "Legends Complete Locations" to "Newcanon Complete Locations".

 

The Jango Fett Arena of Mos Eisley has become the Felvath Kurs arena.

 

I don't get why that is so important when they gush over the OT and the filmmaking from that era over and over again. Then again, Pablo wrote for those early RPG books.

Good, no more random connections between the same 10-12 people throughout the galaxy.

 

I noticed Queen Karina from TCW being referenced in the Geonosis section (since she's Poggle's boss).

I found one Sora Bulq reference in the battle scenes in my copy.

 

This book is entirely justified simply because this page now exists: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ackmena/Canon

 

Still a lot of effort and resource-spending for a few visits every year.

Considering, that those astronauts had to wear forty to fifty kilogram heavy spacesuits that is not surprising. I wonder what dragged the rebels and imperials on Endor down?

I doubt it works like that given the distribution of heavy elements in the universe though it might be possible. However I don't want to imagine, what other consequences such an accumulation of metal has for the enviroment. For once it might result in a much stronger magnetic field (which might also explain the lack of an Endor Holocaust), but it would screw a lot of electronic systems. And I don't want to go into things like metal-poisoning ... .

The loss of planetary mass would cause a weakening of the gravity, so there would be less force returning the remaining body into a spherical shape. Although that doesn't mean, that there isn't enough atmosphere to keep an atmosphere. Also considering your argument from above, if most of the planetary mass is within the planets core the gravity field wouldn't be much effected. And I doubt, that a "collapse back into a spherical shape" would happen within the time-frame of a few years or decades.

Which only shows, that we can't rely on TPTB/storygroup in this regard. "What is what" is dependant on the whims of the one(s) with the most current pull. If we want a conclusive answer we have to look at the movies.

 

Movies or movie-making. Otherwise, we'd have to conclude Boba Fett switches his visor from side to side every other minute.

 

This guy.

He drags everyone down.