ST Starkiller Base - Function and Purpose?

It could do what the Centerpoint Station did: plug coordinates into the weapon system and then fire. Centerpoint Station couldn't be deployed like the Death Star or Sun Crusher.

 

It's the Death Star 3.0. Except this time, there's no thermal exhaust port 3 meters wide, and no way to fly into the core. What to do???

I just hope they don't blow it up at the end of the movie because it's already looking a bit too much kike A New Hope. I hope they can wait until Episode 9 to do that.

 

What do you all think? Does the Starkiller Base Planet have a name? Will it be known? Could it be Hoth or a former EU Planet like Ziost? Or is it just Starkiller Base Planet like it is mentioned for now on starwars.com?

 

In that empire article they say it's just starkiller base..i guess it was some unpopulated, unnamed planet the first order turned into their secret base/weapon. Anyway i m sure it's a new planet.

 

Seen one snow planet u have seen them all..

 

To be a bigger Death Star?

 

Think you're right! But if it has a name there must be a reason why they keep it secret...

We seem to know all planet names so far, short of Luke's sanctuary planet and maybe, if it has a name, the ice planet of the Starkiller Base!

 

This is my only gripe with the film so far. If they're going DS 3.0 there needs to be something new and fresh about it. This gets to where Lucas talked about the sequel trilogy being about how right and wrong often overlap and there is a grey area. I would absolutely love it if Starkiller Base is an inhabited planet, survives TFA, and the only way to destroy it is with a Death Star wielded by the "good guys." I think that would be pretty compelling, and could be a source of conflict between Luke/Leia throughout the trilogy.

 

But we know there's something new and fresh about it. It's a weapon built into an actual planet, covered in snow and forest, and it has the capacity to destroy Stars. So even though it builds on previous Death Star concepts, on a purely visual level, this is going to look very different from the previous Death Stars.

 

Rrs

Don't forget the academy! we dont know on which world it is cant wait to know the name of skellig island, its always fun to learn those things. so far jakku, takodana and d'qar sound great..pure star wars names. already adoptd them like.its been a thousand years hehe.

 

Where were you two when I wanted to discuss this a page before? lol

 

I personally hope the Skellig planet is named Skellig. A great, and somehow very Star Warsy name.

 

It's conceptually the same thing: an ultimate weapon which must be destroyed to prevent doomsday, which is why it is a rehash. Where it will have to be unique/fresh/whatever is how it is dealt with.

 

Don't forget Endor, the place were the death of the Empire began!

 

The fact that it's a spherical superweapon makes sense. As with many technological developments in history, they build off previous developments. Nuclear weapons have advanced, but they still generally look the same, and do the same thing. And it makes perfect sense that a resurgent political movement, who feels that the Empire's work was left unfinished, would decide to build a similar (but more destructive and perhaps less vulnerable) weapon. Housing the weapon within a planet seems to at least eliminate the kind of vulnerabilities the first and second Death Stars had (exhaust ports, and exposed cores during construction...)

But you're also ignoring the very significant visual differences that will likely steer this away from total rehash territory. First, our heroes will be running around on its surface for all of Act 3, and that surface will be full of snow and blizzards and dark forests, instead of being...well...hallways as in ANH. And then, the Resistance Forces will be taking it on within an atmosphere, rather than in space, which we know creates a very distinct visual style to the battle.

Of course, if firing a proton torpedo into an exhaust port at the end of a long trench is the way to blow the thing up, I will be the first in line to call JJ out on it. But I doubt that's going to happen. IMO, there's going to be a unique means for taking this thing out.

 

A laser is a laser. And space is a vacuum. That laser is going to travel through the vacuum of space until it strikes its target. So there's no reason that the Starkiller weapon would have to be close to its target in order to hit it. It just has to be powerful enough to set distant suns as the target and BAM.

 

However, it does make the Death Star moving from place to place in the OT seem a bit silly, in hindsight Of course there's always the "How it Should Have Ended" take on the final scene of ANH... lol

EDIT: Here are a couple of discussions that seem to disprove this concept
http://physics.stackexchange.com/qu...infinite-distances-through-vacuum-using-light
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/electromagnetic-wave-attenuation.344005/

 

A new canon map of the GFFA was released today with the Empire magazine article and it reveals the Starkiller base planet to be in the Unknown regions.
And it might be that we know the snow/forest planet already.
If you take a close look at this section from the new map and compare it to an older map from the old canon:





Starkiller is almost at the same point where Ilum was located in the old maps.

Could the Starkiller planet be Ilum? To me, it's possible because this is the world where the old Jedi had their Kyber crystals from. The new canon made a big deal with these crystals, they appeared in the TCW Utapau arc and some episodes of Rebels. They even had a minor appearance in the Heir to the Jedi novel. Maybe that was already some teasing for TFA.

It's official canon that Kyber crystals were the primary power source of both Death Star's superlasers.
It seems logical that the First Order would use the crystals again for the Starkiller - which is, as JJ recently admitted, some sort of Death Star III. So they decided to build the weapon on Ilum because of its high amount of Kyber crystals, therefore desecrating a once sacred world of the old Jedi order.

 

maybe they use ilum's crystals as the energy focus?

 

So tired of this post. This movie barely looks anything like ANH

 

I've been saying that Starkiller Base = Ilum ever since Starkiller Base was revealed to be a snowy planet. This only makes me more certain. Also of interest to me is how close Starkiller Base is to Rakata Prime. In Legends, the Rakata were an ancient civilization that was exceptionally talented at developing superweapons.

 

Starkiller in action.

 

IMO this is a HUGE new development. I also agreed with others postulating that Ilum could be Starkiller base, based on the evidence we had so far, but this is awesome (I love maps).

The fact that they bothered to put Rakata Prime on the map makes me think we're going to have that part of Star Wars history developed in the new canon at some point... Also, I wonder if we'll see Ord Mantell in TFA, or did they just use it to put another dot on the map considering it's already a canon location (even if it was mentioned, not shown, so far)?

 

The sailors are wondering if this is at night or in the morning.

 

This is what I'm thinking too. Starkiller Base could be an ancient weapon that the First Order dug up.