Lit DS-1 Orbital Battle Stations - Quantity or Quality?

So, apparently, on the Death Star page, Wookiepedia mentions that after the completion of the DS-1, the Imperial Department of Military Research explored the idea of either

-Creating an even larger and more powerful version. A DS-II, if you will.
or
-Having various specialized factory worlds switch their output to the production of assembly-line duplicates of the current DS-1 model.

This is really interesting, and a part of me wonders if it is a callback to the original plot of ROTJ. But I digress.

I wonder how different things would have turned out if the second course was approached rather than the first, and canonical one. Note that, since the Empire was able to produce the larger DS-II in only four years, it is entirely possible they could have churned out two or three DS-I models in that amount of time.

This also harkons back to the planned notion of Palpatine installing a Death Star for every Oversector. Now, the subject of the number of Oversectors after the Clone Wars is a very, very, VERY confusing one. One that I might tackle as a hobby-project in the future. I cannot find a source for the DS per OS quote, so if anyone can provide, that would be neat.

What's your thoughts on this? Should the Empire have pursued this method instead of building the DS-II?

 

Death Stars are so 0 BBY. If the Empire had just been patient and waited a few decades, they could've mounted superlasers on all their Star Destroyers.

 

If they had two functional superlasers at the time of the Battle of Endor they would have won. If it is possible to produce on a larger scale Palpatine was an idiot not to have a second.

however, one explanation for why he didn’t make more than one at a time is the risk of rivals using them against each other. But 2 is ideal for avoiding their destruction by rebels while minimizing this risk

 

It does strike me as odd that the Conqueror project never got more steam. It seemed pretty successful.

 

Well, lets hop into this topic too... @GrandMoffTrachta keeps spiking my interest with his topics!

As of the Battle of Yavin, there were already several Death Star 1 type DS in production.

Despite the length it took and setbacks to the DS1 construction and development, especially the superlaser technology, we do know of several others already prepared to follow suit and that is not just hypothetical ones but actually construction went quite far ahead.

At Endor, DS2, unfinished, larger, set up as a trap, was proof that the Empire post ANH decided to revamp the design in order to reduce the design flaws of the first one and it's Erso-esque built in shortcomings. Were DS2 finished, it would not have had those. DS2 construction began shortly after ANH already with focus on the Superlaser being ready first and foremost.
On Coruscant in the public eye two large small-moon sized habitation spheres were almost completed that would have been easy refits into a Death Star, to the point of being intended as such even! Hence I speculate that their construction began before ANH already in paralell with late stage DS1 finalisation. After DS1 failure though, they were abandoned as potential DS and refurbished into habitation spheres which had been their cover all along.
In the Maw Installation the DS Prototype existed but never was finished into another potential DS1? Why? Keep it as testbed? Keep it as secret last reserve for Tarkin should the Emperor turn on him with the regular DS1? We know JAT claimed the Emperor did not know about the Maw installation but that is not true. He got the team and plans from there for his World Devastators, he wrecked, killed and cloned Lemelisk often enough to have him spill the beans about the installation easily.
Then there is Star Tours DS3... which is actually a DS1 type and could have been the original DS2. While retcon had it that it was one of the habitation spheres turned worldcraft turned fake-DS1 type DS3... I think the history here is a bit more complicated than that retcon:
Given the plans to supply all Oversectors with their own DS-1 type as per pre-ANH, construction began on a plethora of small moon sized stations all over the galaxy (I assume as many as there were oversectors!). Of those not everyone would reach the size of the DS1, some lacking funding and supplies post ANH failure of DS1 were converted into other craft and purposes, i.e. Worldcrafts with or without artificial surface and atmosphere like the one Hethir got. Others were turned into mere habitation spheres or battle planetoids with significantly smaller superlasers (Mysteries of the Sith). That someone turned one such habitation sphere back into a DS3 is an epic feat, fake or not, and only speaks of how easy the conversion must be if one had access to the technology and funding. Something the Hutts would later try with the Darksaber as well. Thus Death Stars were built plenty more then we previously thought, and like the Superstardestroyers probably came in pairs with sister stations/ships like Executor and Lusankya and other such paralell developments.

So yes, there you got it: As of before ANH already each oversector had 1 DS project started, then turned into something else post ANH with DS2 taking shape. And I suspect even DS2's unfinished sacrifice for a trap at Endor can in part be explained by not just the Emperors overconfidence but by him not really needing it as much as originally planned anymore given advances in other areas!
The past 4 years showed even before the DS2 went "larger is better" that miniaturisation of the superlaser technology was possible but not yet where it needed to be to be utilized en masse in Stardestroyers. But the Xyxstons were on the way and would outclass any DS project easily once finished decades later. The Eclipse and other smaller Stardestroyer based superlaser projects (Last of the Jedi young reader book series with Ferus Olin had one, too) proofed the concept. Hence DS2 was expendeable already before completion!

 

Why leave the DS prototype in the Maw? Possibly because the Emperor had the World Devastators and the soon to be completed Galaxy Gun.

 

Based off of just DE II, it seems to have been built between DE I and DE II. That was my interpretation on the Galaxy Gun/Weapon's construction time. Also, I believe the Eclipse II was constructed at the same time as the I, except it was done at Byss from the beginning for some reason.

 

The Galaxy Gun looks like it could have been built by World Devastators even.. long, thin... just feed them and they churn out anything you want, right?

Then again, I always headcanoned that it was never built but already existed for 25000 millennia, was rediscovered, repaired and repurposed. The Galaxy Gun is nothing but an ancient Hyperspace Canon from pre-hyperdrive days, firing huge spaceship size missiles, which are themselves repurposed ancient passenger /freight pod crafts.

 

So do the World Devastators build the Galaxy Gun in little chunks, which are then assembled? Or are World Devastators like giant 3D printers?

 

If going with quantity I would say the should NOT build DS stations...but a lot of Tarkin Battle Stations. Don't worry about having the DS that has all the support internal to it...but a mobile superlaser platform with a fleet for support and defense.

It would give the ability to carry out the terror campaign that the DS was built for but better utilize resources by diverting material for more capital ships.

 

It would be very Sith for the assembly instructions for the Galaxy Gun to be Ikea-style graphics.

 

Come to think of it, World Devastators build other World Devastators...I would imagine that process would be more like 3D printing.

 

It's NOT per a Death Star per Oversector that was the plan, it was a Death Star per Region.

 

I’m fairly certain that “region” in this case is just another word for Oversector/Priority Sector since that seems to tie to Tarkin’s quote in ANH on how “Regional governors now have direct control over their territories.”

 

It doesn't. The Oversectors were a flexible level of command and control in between the defined Galactic Regions (Core Worlds, Outer Rim, etc) and the permanent Sectors. There's a long-defined and explicit difference between the fixed Regions and the "regional" commands, and the phrase "regional" isn't synonymous with an Oversector or a fixed Region, in spite of the similar words.

For the actual Regions, the plan wasn't just a Death Star per Region (NOT Oversector), but also that a Grand Admiral would be put in charge of each entire Galactic Region. That plan was partially implemented, what with Teshik and then Tigellinus in charge of the Core Worlds and Thrawn in charge of the Unknown Regions.

 

It should be noted that the Empire was NOT able to produce the second Death Star in four years. They got the superlaser up and running (barely); but it has no shields, probably no engines, no hyperdrive, is missing at least a third of its structure. The Emperor demanded it be operable on a schedule because he was planning a trap, who knows what else was done to meet that deadline? It might have had undersized power systems that could be more readily installed to operate the incomplete version, that may have had to be replaced to power the complete station. We have no idea how long it would have taken to actually complete.

 

Hrm, how much time passes between Vader's arrival and the Battle of Endor? The only component of the Death Star that Palpatine really needed was the superlaser, and from the dialogue between Vader and Jerjerrod it sounds like it's not anywhere close to being operational at the time. The superlaser is probably the most complicated system, followed by the hyperdrive.

 

The lore behind the DS-II in comparison to the I is and has always been so woefully lacking in comparison.

I’m of the opinion Palpatine ordered the station to appear to be 75% done, or at the least, gave the order for the hull to cease construction at the state we see it in in ROTJ. Hence playing up the trap that the station was incomplete.

Good note on the engines though. In Empire at War, the player is able to move the DS-2 around the galaxy (interestingly enough it still looks incomplete as in ROTJ). But whether this is a game mechanic or indicative of its potential circa 4 ABY is impossible to say.

 

Is it canon that DS2 construction didn't begin until after Yavin? It's possible Palps began work on the second one when he was confident that the first one would work. Beginning production before all the bugs in the prototype are worked out is an ancient and honored tradition in military contracting.

 

Legends had prototype DS2 components appearing before Yavin. In the Tale of the Tonnika Sisters, from the Tales From The Mos Eisley Cantina anthology, by Timothy Zahn, some Mistryl Shadow Guard wound up being involved in the Rebellion's retrieval of a DS2 super laser component, and having to impersonate the Tonnika sisters.

 

Well, if Futurama is any judge, I'd say building a fleet of Death Stars is just opening yourself up to be disappointed. Give me the quality of one vs the quantity of a couple any day.