The EU actually had that; it was called the Galaxy Gun, and it was the least powerful yet most effective of the "superweapon of the day" Imperial projects, because it was a chain reaction warhead (along the lines of a 40K cyclonic torpedo, but variable yield) rather than straight up planet-exploding , but firing what amounted to planetary-scale hyperspace cruise missiles allowed it to pretty much no-sell conventional planetary defenses.
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The EU actually had that; it was called the Galaxy Gun, and it was the least powerful yet most effective of the "superweapon of the day" Imperial projects, because it was a chain reaction warhead (along the lines of a 40K cyclonic torpedo, but variable yield) rather than straight up planet-exploding , but firing what amounted to planetary-scale hyperspace cruise missiles allowed it to pretty much no-sell conventional planetary defenses.
It's also NOT a warship. It only acts like b/c "Federation Super"
Yes. The only real way I've seen the idea achieve relevancy is with contact detonations OR turning them into BOMB-Pumped
Which is what all starships' particle shielding. Makes micrometeors non-threatening. And it's ALWAYS ON even if the 'shields' are down.
"spool-up jump"? That's the dumbest thing I think I've heard regarding hyperspace, and COMPLETELY separate from anything previously mentioned in Star Wars prior.
Bassoe
Well-known member
Moreso, it’s easy. Hyperspace-capable spacecraft are everywhere. Planetary destruction went from requiring the money and industrial might of a galaxy-spanning empire to everyone.
Atomic Rockets - Reactionless Drive said:
Nukes in space are basically just brief, giant balls of radioactive death (because they spit out gamma rays and such), unlike in an atmosphere where heat and pressure help flatten everything.
It's on the Moon, but since the Moon has no real atmosphere, it may as well be in space.
It's on the Moon, but since the Moon has no real atmosphere, it may as well be in space.
Typhonis
Well-known member
You don't need a hyperdrive for superweapon fuckery. Starships using normal drives get up too a few thousand Gs acceleration. Case in point, the Imperial fleet was hiding behind Endor when the Rebel fleet arrived to launch their attack. They had no clue the imperial fleet was there until it moved into position to cut off their retreat.
That requires insane thrust to do so. Hell Acclimators and Venators regularly were shown to lift off and land on Earth normal planets with no problems. Thus we know they have the thrust.
So...where were the Relativistic Kinetic Kill vehicles in Star Wars? Or did they simply not bother because they had a way to neutralize them?
That requires insane thrust to do so. Hell Acclimators and Venators regularly were shown to lift off and land on Earth normal planets with no problems. Thus we know they have the thrust.
So...where were the Relativistic Kinetic Kill vehicles in Star Wars? Or did they simply not bother because they had a way to neutralize them?
Bigking321
Well-known member
I don't recall anything in particular besides planetary shields.
That and tractor beams are a thing.
I suppose by the time the capital ship was in danger of being lost it was preferable to try and escape with the hugely valuable ship rather than suicide charges into a planet.
I guess custom ships could have been built to be impacters. I dunno. There's probably a cost/benefit thing there.
I know the few times it showed the results of a capital ship hitting a planet it was a BAD thing. Much destruction and devastation.
Typhonis
Well-known member
You don't need custom ship impactors. All you need is something going 99psl, percent the speed of light, to hit the target. Give it a droid brain and let loose from the edge of a star system. By the time they see the damn impactor it is far too late.
Planets have orbits that can be calculated. We were doing it with just telescopes and paper charts. When you know where it will be then you simply launch the impactor at that location. When it gets close enough the droid brain starts to guide it to the target.
At the speed it is going it will cross 100,000 miles in less than a second. At those speeds it is packing it's own weight in antimatter. Thus a 500 ton solid impactor is going to be a bad day for a world or ship. Nightmare time is if the damn thing splits apart into independently targeted impactors.
Planets have orbits that can be calculated. We were doing it with just telescopes and paper charts. When you know where it will be then you simply launch the impactor at that location. When it gets close enough the droid brain starts to guide it to the target.
At the speed it is going it will cross 100,000 miles in less than a second. At those speeds it is packing it's own weight in antimatter. Thus a 500 ton solid impactor is going to be a bad day for a world or ship. Nightmare time is if the damn thing splits apart into independently targeted impactors.
Bigking321
Well-known member
I... don't think they can get anywhere near those speeds.
Edit: or if it can be calculated out that way through a feat or something I am certain it wasn't intentional.
Causeimboredrightnow
Active member
If you want to destroy a planet, that would certainly work. However, it would kill the planet, take months to get up to speed (during which time you’d better hope absolutely nobody even gets a whiff of this coming), and it would be a one shot weapon. Also it should be absolutely useless against a mobile target, like a ship or fleet (Holdo BS is BS).
Alternatively, you can BDZ a planet with a couple of capital ships and a couple hours, or achieve the same level of destruction slower over a couple of days with cruisers.
Let’s say you’re a military in Star Wars and you’re fighting in one of the galactic wars that periodically erupt. You have the option to acquire two dreadnaught class cruisers, or ten of these KKV’s. The KKV is a one shot, great if it works but not guaranteed to do jack, strategic weapon that cannot be used against fleets. The dreadnoughts are reusable in that they aren’t destroyed just by achieve their objective. Also they can serve in larger or smaller task forces, achieve the same results as a KKV (though not as spectacularly) and have a lot of flexibility in their use.
Also, the goal is typically conquest of life bearing planets, not the elimination of those planets.
Because Particle shielding pretty much means that kinetic impacts are ignored while they still function. At least that's how it was largely written back in the day. Mind you, the particle shields are separate from defensive battle Shields.
I've always taken that to mean that particle shielding is enough to ignore a certain tier of kinetic energy.
The shot in ESB with the rock destroying an ISD bridge is...well, the exception to prove the rule...maybe. Or heck, the SD was launching bombers/fighters and had dropped their particle shielding?
Lord Sovereign
The resident Britbong
The bridge might have already taken so much punishment that the shields couldn't hold anymore.
By the way, what became of that Star Destroyer? The superstructure didn't immediately disintegrate on impact (ISDs are sturdy beasts) so whilst the command staff were killed, would the wider vessel have held together?
Morphic Tide
Well-known member
Drag is only technically existent in space, so negligible that people talk more in terms of micrometeor damage than velocity lost to collision. Consequently, reaching ludicrously high speeds is a function of delta v, which is the overall amount of acceleration that the ship can undergo. As Star Wars uses negligible to nonexistent reaction mass drives capable of multiple stellar escape velocity maneuvers without refueling, cheap relativistic KKVs are very hard to argue against.
Maybe not 0.99c, but definitely into relativistic speeds.
Skallagrim
Well-known member
SW obviously doesn't play by "real physics" rules. Trying to apply shit like delta v is never going to work, because we outright get told that ships have a stated maximum speed (not maximum acceleration; maximum speed) when in space. Ships that lose power also don't keep on going at constant speed, but fall back to stand-still.
Incidentally, said top speed is (for the very fastest ships) 100 MGLT, or "Megalight", which is never properly defined. But from context and indicated speeds at a few points in the films (people took the trouble of actually decyphering a few displays we see), it may be inferred that 1 MGLT is roughly 1080 kilometres per hour, or a millionth of lightspeed. (Which... sort of... suits the prefix 'mega', because that implies that a multiplication by a million in involved.) Meaning that the fastest ships have a "top speed" (in space) of 100 times 1080 km/h = 108.000 km/h = roughly 0.01% of lightspeed.
So... going from what we actually see (in the films) and are told (at least in the old EU), no ships can reach a significant fraction of lightspeed in realspace.
Of course, George Lucas gave exactly zero fucks about any of this, which is how you get the implication that the Falcon can just fly to Bespin with sub-light engines in (what is implied to be) a matter of a few weeks, at most. (The EU provided a 'fix' fo this by telling us that the Falcon has a back-up hyperdrive that could get them there, but much more slowly than the main hyperdrive could.)
Incidentally, said top speed is (for the very fastest ships) 100 MGLT, or "Megalight", which is never properly defined. But from context and indicated speeds at a few points in the films (people took the trouble of actually decyphering a few displays we see), it may be inferred that 1 MGLT is roughly 1080 kilometres per hour, or a millionth of lightspeed. (Which... sort of... suits the prefix 'mega', because that implies that a multiplication by a million in involved.) Meaning that the fastest ships have a "top speed" (in space) of 100 times 1080 km/h = 108.000 km/h = roughly 0.01% of lightspeed.
So... going from what we actually see (in the films) and are told (at least in the old EU), no ships can reach a significant fraction of lightspeed in realspace.
Of course, George Lucas gave exactly zero fucks about any of this, which is how you get the implication that the Falcon can just fly to Bespin with sub-light engines in (what is implied to be) a matter of a few weeks, at most. (The EU provided a 'fix' fo this by telling us that the Falcon has a back-up hyperdrive that could get them there, but much more slowly than the main hyperdrive could.)
1. Likely
2. I don't even remember the name of the ship to look it up...and apparently, neither does the internet.
I forget what technobabble term the EU officially made up for it, but it's consistent in all canon and EU content that ships making the "jump into hyperspace" -- which is definitely the canon terminology -- accellerate to extreme real-space velocity before actually going into hyper.
Morphic Tide
Well-known member
It's referring to the "smear-frame" of entering Hyperspace, which IIRC gets called "pseudomotion" because it doesn't actually impart its apparent momentum on collision.
Pseudomotion is the official term in both Legends and Disney Canon, having been originally used in Heir to the Empire and now re-canonized in Thrawn.
There's something usually overlooked in science fiction- inertia.
Remember that scene from "Spaceballs" where Dark Helmet was hurled against a back wall? That was actually a bit of common sense. A jet fighter on our world doing tight maneuvers can literally make a twenty-pound helmet weigh a couple of hundred pounds (something feminists know nothing about but even "Airwolf" did).
Ever see footage of people launched into space? The seats have to be specially built.
And you here know how slings work. So a turning ship, the people further away from the point where the ship is turning are going to be in real trouble. In something the size of that Imperial Super Star Destroyer, well...
Thus a ship suddenly accelerating like those spacecraft do, unless there is some sort of "inertia dampener" at work, would cause its crew to be splattered all about. In reality super-fast and maneuverable ships would either be robot-controlled or be remote controlled.
Remember that scene from "Spaceballs" where Dark Helmet was hurled against a back wall? That was actually a bit of common sense. A jet fighter on our world doing tight maneuvers can literally make a twenty-pound helmet weigh a couple of hundred pounds (something feminists know nothing about but even "Airwolf" did).
Ever see footage of people launched into space? The seats have to be specially built.
And you here know how slings work. So a turning ship, the people further away from the point where the ship is turning are going to be in real trouble. In something the size of that Imperial Super Star Destroyer, well...
Thus a ship suddenly accelerating like those spacecraft do, unless there is some sort of "inertia dampener" at work, would cause its crew to be splattered all about. In reality super-fast and maneuverable ships would either be robot-controlled or be remote controlled.
Except again NOBODY ever figured that trick out after centuries? Give us Earth humans hyperspace technology today and we'd be building hyperspace ramming missiles in a week.
Inertial dampeners have been canon in Star Wars pretty much from the beginning, though.