Was the death star a stupid invention to begin with?

Let's think about it. The goal of conquering and ruling a large country or in this case a galaxy is because of the land and resources in that area. Now what I don't get is why do you build a piece of machinery that is going to reduce the amount of land and resources in the area you want to rule/conquer. If you blow it up, there's nothing there. Meaning nothing to rule or attain. Just nothingness. The smartest thing the Empire could've done is bombard Alderaan into submission. But by blowing it up, you just lost a very valuable piece of land or in this case planet.

So my point is, why is a death star necessary? It seems like a big waste. What's the point of ruling over everything, if you're going to blow it all up? It's like as if a country is trying to conquer another country because of the oil and tree sap. Instead of fighting the country to the point they surrender, the country that wants the resources blows the whole thing up and all the valuables are destroyed. So what is the point? You lost everything.

So to me, the death star was a real stupid invention by the Empire.

 

"Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battlestation."

They don't want to rule the galaxy by blowing half of it up. They want to rule it by the possibility of being able to blow all of it up.
And I get the impression that blowing up a planet is more like burning down a village rather than bombing a country or city.

 

Exactly. There are tons of habitable planets in the GFFA, so the point is to sacrifice a small number to make an example of them to keep everyone else from trying anything.

-sj loves kevin spacey

 

The USA could have flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the airforce using conventional bombs a la Dresden. But the nuclear bomb levelled the cities with one blast, scaring the crap out of the Japanese and forcing them to surrender. Same thing with the Death Star.

 

I wonder if they could crank down the power on it so that it would just vaporize a city.

 

Its the atomic bomb of the GFFA. So, if by "stupid" you mean "useless", no I would say that just like the atomic bomb the Death Star is a wonderful device to intimidate potential enemies into behaving.

 

I'd say a ray-shielded thermal exhaust port was a stupid invention to begin with.

 

The purpose of a Galactic Empire is to conquer the planets it came in contact with, instead the retard built a poorly designed battle station to destroy planets. If he used common sense he would've built a starforge dupe. Even though the Star forge was more advanced .

 

I believe it was in the Heir to the Empire series, where the clone of Joruus C'baoth said that in order to truly rule, you have to keep your subjects alive.

Though the Empire didn't like losing resources, or anything at all in that matter, they could stand to lose a few if need be. It's a small price to pay to ensure the rest of the galaxy stays in line.

 

I agree with the intimidation factor...

Also remember it's likely that the Death Star's purpose was to be used against other things besides just planets. All that was ever said is that it had ENOUGH POWER to destroy a planet, but didn't necessarily say that was its only mission. In ROTJ, we also see it put to use by destroying some of the Rebellion's Capital Ships...something that could come to use much more often...

 

"The regional governors now have direct control over
territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this
battle station."

The plan was blow up one or two planets that oppose, the rest will obey. The Death Star was built as an intimidation weapon. I don't think the Empire really wanted to be blowing up planets left and right, merely to demonstrate that they could. Besides, even without blowing up planets, you still have the largest mobile military base in the galaxy. That alone has strategic implications that make the Death Star anything but useless.

 

The Death Star is the classic example of instead of the villians matching the heros and getting smaller,lighter,leaner and meaner the villians have to get bigger,stronger,dumber and slower.

The Death Star strikes me as something that should be built and used during a time of galaxys at war,going at each other with fleets of capital ships.Not during a civil war against a small rebellion/ of your own empire.When all out civil war breaks out everywhere the death star would be to big and unwieldy to use.Going by the movies only theres just no one to use it on effectively.

The Empire would have been better served to spend all those credits on improving the things they already had.Better Tie and captital ships,intelligence and clone troopers that sort of thing.Bring the Stormies,there gear and hardware back to the Clone Wars greatness;not the idiots who can't shot straight and are tripping and falling all over the place.These guys battled and defeated Jedi and advanced robots!

To me using the Death Star is closer to the North using it on the South then say the USA vs Japan or Russia.

 

The Death Star wasn't built to squash the rebellion though. It was already undergoing construction at the end of ROTS, as Palpatine was establishing his Empire. There was no rebel alliance yet, other than the small secret meetings of a few disgruntled Senators. As an active force in opposition to the Empire, the Rebellion simply did not exist at the time the Death Star was being built. It was not a reaction to rebellion at all. Your civil war analogy just doesn't hold up.

You also forget that other than ONE weakness, that took a burgeoning Jedi Knight to exploit, the Death Star would have succeeded. There were two pilots in the entire galaxy that would have been capable of firing the torpedo accurately enough to exploit the weakness, and both would have required the assistance of the Force to do it. One of them was Luke, the other was his father. If Luke had failed, the Death Star would have dominated the galaxy as it was intended to do. It only seems like a foolish venture to you because hindsight is 20/20. The Death Star's potential however, made its cost well worth it.

 

The smartest thing the Empire could've done is bombard Alderaan into submission. But by blowing it up, you just lost a very valuable piece of land or in this case planet.


Yep, thats been my argument as to why Palpatine would be angry at A-hole Tarkin. Palpatine is a lot smarter than that. In a galaxy of billions of stars and trillions of planets, the GFFA senate only represented 24,372 systems (per Wookiepedia). Those are the ones that could support intelligent lifeforms and provide goods and thats a teeny tiny percentage of all the planets in the galaxy. Alderaan was one of the good planets, worth much more alive than dead. The intimidation factor would have worked just as well by blowing up a large dead planet with witnesses, and just blasting city or two on Alderaan and then sending in troops. The Death Stars are only really good for intimidation and if you blow up that planet, you cant intimidate them anymore.

 

I'm just using this one aspect of it nothing deeper.The Empire and Rebels are part of the same Empire,like the North and South.America,Japan and Russia are completely different countries.The Empire using the Death Star is closer to if the North used it on the South then say the USA using it on Japan or Russia in an all out war.


The Jedi are not some old order long gone they where just in power,one day more force users will appear(like they do in the movies).Sid wouldn't know how many force users are still out there.Again dominate what,there is no one else.It's overkill.It's your own empire your destroying.Instead of sinking all those resources into the Evil death ray it should have been used to develope and maintain everything else.Watch the movies,they lose.All the death star did was waste resources and turn the galaxy more against the Empire by showing everyone just how bad they where.

 

Using Earth analogies to the SW GFFA is not really a good idea.


But yeah, if they had devoted as much resources as they did on the Death Stars to increasing the number of clonetroopers and starships etc by a factor of 1000 times, the rebels would have been easily tracked down and eliminated. If by nothing else than by sheer numbers, the Imperials would have eventually stumbled upon them.

 

They already a starforge-esque invention before the Star Forge was ever thought up.

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

I'm sure it could. If the DS II could aim and take out capital ships like they were nothing, they shouldn't have much of a problem vaping a city or two.

 

It was my understanding that they didn't develop the ability to fire at low power until the DSII, that with the first one, you had to fully charge it before you could fire it at all...With the DSII however, they figured out you can tone it down to take out capital ships, and then recharge more quickly...so, that advance was at most only a few years away from the ANH timeframe anyway, just over the horizon. It seems quite reasonable to assume that had the Death Star survived Yavin, that it would have been upgraded with this advancement as soon possible. It certainly would have made it even more useful than it was. Shoot, while advancing the laser technology, maybe someone would have figured out how to eliminate the exhaust port weakness too...shoot, a simple bend in the exhaust shaft probably would have done it. Instead of a straight shot leading to the central core, maybe just bend it so it has an angle or two. Dangerous gases still escape like they should, and it also eliminates a direct shot traversing the entire distance of the shaft. Simple fix. Or, just put a stupid grate on the end.

But again, I think the Death Star was well worth its cost anyway. A mobile military base the size of a small moon? Who COULDN'T use that to their advantage? (assuming the opposition doesn't have the son of the Chosen One flying with them, LOL) Why spend money on all these extra ships, all these extra troops that you have to then supply armor, food, housing etc for, when you can go wherever you want in the galaxy with a virtually unbeatable superweapon? The only reason the Death Star wasn't an unrivaled success on the Empire's part was Luke Skywalker.

 

Or, just put a stupid grate on the end.


Sadly, grate technology in the GFFA was only in its primitive stages.



Darth Stewie: "Cant we board it up or put some plywood over it or something ?"

 

From: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Death_Star

The Death Star's superlaser derived power directly from the hypermatter reactor. Its faceted amplification crystal combined the destructive power of eight separate tributary beams into one single blast with the intensity of a stellar core. Though the energy output of this blast could be scaled to fire at smaller targets such as capital ships, as was the case during the Rebel assault on the second Death Star, the two major instances in which the superlaser was fired were at full power at planetary bodies. Firing a planetary-destroying shot required the Death Star to generate power equivalent to the output of hundreds of super-giant stars.

 

well, there you go...if the first Death Star already had the ability to short-charge and take out capital ships, in addition to being a highly strategic mobile military base, it also could have served the role as a capital ship buster too. With the shields up, no capital ship could hope to damage it. Other than the exhaust port, the Death Star was invulnerable to an outside attack. (it would have remained vulnerable to certain types of sabotage, as explained by my theories in the Why are there no nuclear weapons in Star Wars thread in the Saga Forum...)

I remain convinced that other than one super lucky shot, assisted by the Force, fired by the boy who go on to become one of, if not the greatest Jedi ever, the Death Star would have been everything Palpatine intended it to be. As a galaxy wide domination/intimidation weapon, other than Palpatine and Vader themselves, the Death Star would have had no peers. (I do still believe that the ability to destroy planets is insignificant next to the power of the Force, lol)

 

The super laser makes for a hell of a one shot one kill thing but it has many thousands of turbolaser batteries that can most certainly bring down capital ships as well. Planet buster ship buster, fleet base, it's actually quite useful.

 

Indeed..

 

Firing a planetary-destroying shot required the Death Star to generate power equivalent to the output of hundreds of super-giant stars.

Thats what makes Wookiepedia explanations impossible to believe. So, the exhaust from the output of hundreds of super-giant stars goes thru one hole, no bigger than a womprat, with no grate.

 

Actually I think that is why Vader was so cynical about the Death Star. The Force was a far better control mechanism because rather than taking out a planet, you can simply bring the planet under submission, even if it meant taking out a good amount of the population, you would still have a planet with land and a place for people to be reborn, settle or whatever and you could rule over them. How many planets would Sidious or disgruntled Generals like Tarkin take out over time? Who knows. Not a brilliant plan to wipe out a planet when you already have a more efficient method for control. The advantage to the Death Star was its quickness and scare potential - but that is totally outweighed by the sheer number of beings that you lose control over with each attack.