Whatever happened to that Great Weapon?

Well? Awhile ago some guy named Saxton speculated that the 'Death Star' seen in RotS was it, which I thought was a great idea. That hypothesis got shot down, though, so... where'd it go? Is it orbiting some secret planet, never to be completed? Did the Empire get ahold of it? Are it and Death Star I one and the same? Was it just a bunch of smoke and mirrors?

 

The one in RotS sounds like the descriptions of the Death Star Prototype, that of a rather sparce framework. Any chance they converted it into a testbed/ prototype, when they needed a proof of concept later?

 

Not likely, considering that, not only did George Lucas say that it was the darn Death Star I - which makes sense for sheer drama's sake - but the Geonosians already had plans and everything worked out for a recognizable Death Star.

 

It's the same spaceframe as would later end up at Despayre, in very preliminary form. The frame would get relocated several times over the years to foil saboteurs, though there were already several significant "testbeds" produced decades before Revenge of the Sith -- the Nharl superlaser (the Medstar novels), the CIS's "Starkiller" weapon (The Living Force online RPG supplements), their CW Adventures planetbuster, and Sienar's Expeditionary Battle Planetoid.

The Maw Installation was yet another post-Clone Wars effort at refining the superlaser, along with the "Trigon 1" station from Droids animated, and the "Tarkin" reactor from the Marvel series, which might've improved upon DS II's system, had it passed final muster (and, um, survived). Saxton's posit is largely correct -- there's simply been multiple angles of approach to the problem, with the result somewhere in the fuzzy middle.

 

I can't remember which references are where, and which are movie, Reversal of Fortune webstrip, and maybe other places like comics, but Poggle refers variously to both a "Great Weapon" and an "Ultimate Weapon"...

Could this differentiation distinguish the ANH and RotJ Death Stars?

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Hopefully Star Wars: Death Star will clear it all up...and if not, well, we can always rely on Abel and co to sort out our messes.

 

The phrase "Great Weapon" only comes from SWTC. All other places it is referred to as the "Ultimate Weapon."

 

Folks, I know the RotS battlestation is one and the same as Death Star I. My question is, since that ain't the Great Weapon, where is it?

Legs, Poggle the Lesser calls it the Great Weapon in Reversal of Fortune. It's actually that line of dialog that most supports the Great/Ultimate Weapon progressing anywhere beyond the planning stage.

 

How do we know that the Great Weapon isn't the Death Star?

 

Nharl superlaser in the med star books? were was that at? and what was it suppose to do?

 

It was a Republic prototype superlaser that destroyed the Equani homeworld Equanus, mentioned towards the end of Jedi Healer.

 

The Great Weapon = The Ultimate Weapon = The Death Star Project. The CIS is disbanded, and the leadership, i.e. everyone who would know about the weapon's production, is killed by Darth Vader, allowing Palpy to quietly take over the project for the Empire.

Question about Hammertong: the 501st needed to capture an experimental Mygeetan energy source for project Hammertong, which we know was the Death Star's superlaser. Why did Palpatine have the 501st need to steal the powersource from the CIS, for use in a CIS project? My guess is he needed a legitimate reason to halt whatever uses the CIS had in mind for it.

 

In the game, the voiceovers tell us that the 501st was sent there -- "officially" -- to take out a major CIS energy-collector right before most of the GAR forces on-station there advanced. Unofficially, they were gunning for the crystal, which Palpatine's R&D folks needed for the superlaser project.

It was mainly pretense, to insert the 501st in there long enough under the noses of the Jedi to get the job done.

 

Most likly that, despite what the novels say-his control over the war was not 100% absolute. It could have been a rouge project, or something not even relayed to the war: maybe just a power generator for the city

 

Matt: Hammertong was the superlaser component for Death Star II, not I. The CIS thing had nothing officially to do it to my knowledge. Leto, I reckon that makes sense-- although the simplest answer (OOU) is that it was a lame excuse to be on Mygeeto when they should've been on Coruscant. The BFII story was poor in almost every respect. Thing should be apocryphal.

 

Poggle! I'd forgotten about him. Why'd you have to remind me? "Poggle"---what kind of immature name is that? Named after some camera man's canine, I'll bet.

 

Originally, Hammertong was DS II. Wookieepedia supports the BFII storyline and says it as DSI, so I'm thinking it may have been retconned?

 

I don't see what the problem is with "Project Hammertong" embracing both the Death Star designs, or even with it being connected directly to the Endor Death Star at that early stage: is there any explicit evidence that connects the Mygeeto device to the RotJ/ANH Death Star?

Apart from GG5 (in-universe Alliance/NR material) I know of no evidence that the RotJ Death Star was only begun after ANH... and even GG5 certainly doesn't exclude a DS2 superlaser being designed earlier...



- The Imperial Ewok

 

That's true, especially if Project: Hammertong was merely the Empire's superlaser project, thus encompassing all research into superlaser design and engineering.