The Star Forge for sure, just imagine If the thing was still around when the Galactic Empire took over, it could produce a infinite amount of Imperial Class Star Destroyers, any variation of TIE-Fighters and any other ship and weapon design they could come up with.
A army of Tie defenders and Super star destroyers, if commanded by some competent admirals then empire would have crushed the rebellion a long time ago. The star forge was hilariously overpowered.
Look up the following things:
• Elbphilharmonie Hamburg
• Airport Berlin-Brandenburg (BER)
• Stuttgart 21
• PKW-Maut Germany plans
At least the first three definitely have English sources (Wikipedia or else). The last one was yet another completely mismanaged political project that went against EU-law and cost the taxpayers millions without ever yielding any actual result. And it was clear from the get-go that it would fail, the only person who didn’t get that was the minister for traffic management, who continued to pursue this futile project.
The first three are fantastic examples for horribly mismanaged German projects, especially BER and Stuttgart 21. Look it up and it’ll completely and permanently shatter your image of German efficiency.
Yeah, if Thrawn had the Star Forge at the time of his legends novels, things would get crazy. His biggest problem would be manning, which was already a problem and why he wanted the accelerated cloning. He'd have to highly automate his warships, but he could take over very quickly.
Then again, that might not stop his demise anyway due to a certain bodyguard, but I'm sure Palleon could do a good job carrying his legacy.
The Vong would sure be in for a surprise when they showed up, lol. Their advanced units might just waive off the invasion entirely if they could not sabotage or capture the Star Forge.
If the Star Forge existed when the Vong invaded, the Empire would have washed the floor with them. Palpatine was already preparing for the invasion (one of the reasons he created super weapons was to combat their World Ships). It would have been a blood bath
Try to get your hands on Rogue Planet and then Outbound Flight. They tie in to the NJO story, but basically Palpatine had a Force vision of an extreme threat to the galaxy and only vaguely picked up the direction. That's why he was so interested in the Unknown Regions and the Chiss in particular. He knew the Republic was far too weak to face the threat and so supposedly that's why he set out to forge the Empire into a wall strong enough to halt the invasion.
There's an excerpt where a Grand Moff (can't remember which one) is in a heated argument with Han Solo about the New Republic's initial incompetence during the outset of the Vong War. Something to the effect of "If Emperor Palpatine were still in power, General, I can assure you thr Yuuzhan Vong wouldn't have set one tattooed toe inside this galaxy!" To which Solo replies "No, what he would have done was sunk billions of credits into some crazy weapon or battlestation called the Vong Smasher or something stupid like that, and you know what? It wouldn't have worked! Some hotshot pilot would have dumped a bomb into an exhaust pipe or a vent and destroyed it! We would have bet the entire galaxy on it and lost!" IIRC.
It seems implied that the Star Forge really wasn’t *that* useful, given the Rakata only ever ruled 500 worlds. That is a fraction of a fraction of the Empire’s height.
Then again, scale has never been Star Wars’ strong point.
> It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
Indeed..
Like 40k writers telling stories of how Astartes conquering entire planets while numbering thousands or just hundreds..
It doesn't matter how awesome your super soldier is, he can't be in 100 places at once. Planets are fucking huge.
Not to mention chapters fighting on several fronts and garrisoning their home planet at once.. When there are supposedly only 1000 guys.
Or ordinary troop numbers involved in *planetary* conflicts being ridiculously small.
My thought process is that since the Rakata was such an early species that, while they only conquered only 500 worlds, it was the entire galaxy at the time.
This. It's entirely possible that most of the planets in the galaxy didn't support intelligent life yet. Technically, that's probably already true. If you go far enough back, it's likely way more true.
Non industrialized maybe, but there's too many intelligent species that aren't human for it to be that small a number.
I've always seen the galaxy as made up of a lot of under developed species that were basically given technology by trade instead of inventing it themselves. With only a few exceptions.
I'd say it's like comparing earlier empires to the Roman Empire or later empires to the Roman Empire. I'd say going off real history it makes sense for the Infinite Empire to be fairly small compared to other empires in Star Wars.
The 500 worlds thing was so dumb, pretty clear no one who worked on that script every had an editor go he hey the galaxy is huge, that sounds too small. It should be like 50000.
They invented the hyperdrive, but that's the thing: it was a new invention, there was no pre-established hyperlanes. Imagine just having invented the automobile but no highways have been built yet, same situation only on a galactic scale.
They did invent it but that does not mean it reached what was in kotor levels or OT levels of travel think first car or heck even a carriage 500 worlds is impressive when you start the first galactic civilization
50,000 is still tiny compared to the Empire. Here’s an excerpt I liked from an EU book “Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina.”
*”There are four hundred billion stars in the galaxy. Most of them have planets; about half have planets capable of supporting life. About a tenth of those worlds have evolved life of their own, and about one in a thousand of those worlds have evolved intelligent life forms.”*
Assuming I did my math right, with about 400 billion stars (which is a massive galaxy btw), as a baseline of 51% of stars having planets, and 1 planet per star, you get about 10.2 billion planets that evolve intelligent life. If you assume a galaxy about the same size as the Milky Way, you get about 2.5 billion planets with intelligent life, which seems ridiculously large considering how few species we've even heard of (though to be fair there's like a whole fifth of the galaxy that's relatively unexplored
They should have made that the explanation for the 10K ISDs in ep9 instead of palpatine diverted resources from the still in power empire while they were fighting the rebellion
He had virtually unlimited wealth. I have no problem accepting he built and hid the final order’s fleet. Now what does bother me is where the hell did he find millions of people to crew those ships without anyone finding out about it.
It's weird because having a factory planet has been a concept I think as early as Ep. 7 so I really don't understand why they just did not went with that.
A weaker empire built version should have been the evil macguffin in VII. Explains how the FO got so powerful so quickly and instead of another planet killer they have a powerful armada that they invade everywhere with.
Then in IX you could keep a lot of the dumb plot and just have Exegol be where an OG Star Forge is pumping out Star Destroyers, except something not as lazy in design as the Xyston.
I mean FFS, the Xyston fleet SHOULD have been a mothball fleet of ISD I's that were upgraded but noooo that dumbass had to have them "new" ships built by this stupid powerful cult. Sorry, I digress.
You’re aiming too low…
Let the Star Forge make an army of Sun Crushers which are smaller than ISDs but blow up stars and can withstand a partial Death Star superlaser attack
I thought in lore the tie fighters were inferior, it's redeeming quality being that it was cheap, easy to manufacture and easy to replace. It's doctrine of use was overwhelming numbers.
All that said, with the ability of the star forge, wouldn't it make more sense to forge unlimited amounts of X Wings, or whatever was the defacto best starfighter?
At least a bit, I think the Empire probably LIKED the design flaws. The replaceability and "You could die at any moment" aspect of them benefits an Empire that wants to make its soldiers feel replaceable and vulnerable, needing the Empire.
Keep in mind that Palpatine certainly never cared for anyone's lives except his own and a few close associates and he was always confident in his victory, even until just moments before his death. He had contingencies in case the Empire fell but he KNEW Luke was either going to turn and become his apprentice or die, and he KNEW he set the ultimate trap for the rebels.
Wasn't it revealed in the game though that using the Star Forge too much results in a plague that strips people off Force-sensitivity like what happened to the Rakatans? The Star Forge is a dark side nexus after all.
I had always wished the Star Forge was the secret behind the swift rise of the First Order. No need for Death Star 4 Planet Edition or the armada of Death Star Destroyers.
That was my theory before The Rise of Skywalker came out. It would’ve been a nice callback and worked better than just a bunch of unnamed rich people somehow bankrolling the First Order without a return of investment or the New Republic realizing.
I'd would say it would eventually reach a limit when the star it was draining ran out of sufficient mass to sustain fusion. However, I estimate that'd be after a hundred thousand years of continuous use.
Exactly the reason why I like it so much. Planet killers get very old very fast, this is a far more unique approach.
A near sentient space station outliving it's creators and the empire that build it, fuled by the Dark Side and the raw energy of a star.
Centerpoint Station. I actually liked the lore implications of an ancient civilization that could manufacture star systems. I hope they bring some aspect of it back in the new canon.
Aye, same here.
Also, it's so versatile. Even just militarily it can do so much both offensively and defensively, and there's a ton of applications for it beyond that.
I think there is a chance we will see it explored eventually. I honestly really hope we see the Abeloth storyline explored in canon at some point, it was one of my favorite lore tidbits of the EU.
Abeloth would have been such a good choice for the antagonist of the sequels.
And she might have been originally, and the original concept for the main villain had it be a woman that was even "beautiful to look at".
She absolutely fills the void of needing to up the stakes while not devaluing the ot.
Damn, haven’t even thought about it.
It’s always sad to me and f I think about in how many unique and interesting directions it could have gone vs. what actually happened.
It's ties to Abeloth and the Maw were also really intriguing to me. The first time I'd heard of the Maw was in Star Wars: Rogue Squadron II. There was a mission called "Prisoners of the Maw" where you had to free captured Rebels that the Empire was holding captive. You had to attack a prison colony on an asteroid that was close to the Maw itself. In the first part of the mission, as you're flying to the target, you can see the Maw in the background. It's a colossal mass of black holes that the Thuruht hive used Centerpoint Station to pull together in order to keep Abeloth trapped. It's always been such a fascinating part of Star Wars history to me.
It annoys me so much that TROS used the Palpatine Reborn plot and the idea of Death Star lasers on a Star Destroyer, both of which are from Dark Empire but it didn't use Palpatine Reborn's flagship, the Eclipse, the original Star Destroyer with a super laser. There's concept art of the Eclipse for TROS so they actually considered using it and decided to go with a fleet of generic destroyers with super lasers instead.
They easily could've had the Eclipse be the big target the heroes destroy to take down the whole fleet even with that idea.
They could afford thousand star destroyers with a death star laser. But couldn’t afford a damn navigation device. The navigation tower was dumb that it wasn‘t even enjoyable
Yep and the idea of having several ships controlled by one has been done in Legends without being remotely that level of stupid. A cargo convoy all being controlled by the lead ship so only one pilot is needed for example.
They could've had the TROS fleet similarly tied to the Eclipse. Not out of necessity but because Palpatine wants absolute control over it. No margin for human error or mutiny. It makes the Eclipse a big obvious target for the heroes but there's actually some logic behind why Palpatine would have one big target that could render his entire fleet helpless if destroyed.
I cannot for my own health get into how badly on even a basic level of storytelling that trilogy was. I'm not saying the other too trilogies were perfect... at all. They had wide open possibilities and that's what they chose? It's very rare that I could confidently do a better job. At least in so far as what the bad guy's wanted and were doing.
It's hilarious that about everything Dark Empire did was better than Rise of Skywalker, even though DE was and still is hated. A lot of the ideas are kinda good, like Palpatine transitioning to a magiocracy led by sith cultists out in the open. Or actually seeing him switch bodies and the insane amount of resources he was able to spend on just those bodies, only to see Luke destroy them. Seeing Palpatine create a damn black hole would have been a bit more terrifying than the lighting too, it could start small and seemingly about to fade away only to then be released and massively expand.
Exactly. Just imagine someone working at their station and sitting in a giant chair, barely touching the console like a child just because Palpatine (read: Lazy Graphics team) decided to just use an old model but scale it up.
The original Episode 9 script had Finn, Rey, Poe, and BB-8 commandeer an Eclipse Class Star Dreadnought from drydock over Kuat.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Duel_of_the_Fates
https://imgur.com/gallery/GwFZReL
No, this happened in the EU. Thrawn dropped rocks fitted with cloaking tech into orbit over Coruscant, forcing Coruscant to keep its planetary shield up and keeping the planet out of the war.
Yep. With that kind of weapon in the lore, a bad guy doesn’t have to be super popular or a political mastermind to amass a dangerous army. He can be just a truly deranged psychopath with a star forge.
That's what made Revan the perfect person to find and utilize it. He was extremely popular with everyone, even his enemies, AND a military genius. He didn't need it to pose a threat to the entire galaxy, but with it, he was all but unstoppable. I love Revan's history and introduction, but God do I hate how they used him post KOTOR.
The World Devastator. Factory robot ships that used tractor beams to tear up all the matter on a planet and converted it into new elements in their molecular furnace, and then used those elements as raw materials to crank out endless droid fighters and war machines.
Sun Crusher. Love me an indestructible ice cream cone that’s more powerful than Starkiller Base and a fraction the size of a Xyston-class Star Destroyer. /s
The fact that when Han Solo Stole the thing the first thing he had to take on was a Star Destroyer, and he took it out by RAMMING the BRIDGE! Badass moment and established the Sun Crusher as one of the most interesting Macguffin's in Star Wars History.
LATER They sank it in the depths of the gas giant Yavin and Kyp Durron recovered it using the Dark Side (and a long-dead Sith Lord's energy). It blew up entire Star Systems at his hands, and had one of the most emotionally terrifying scenes on the Imperial Training world of Carida.... (IYKYK). It finally died KILLING A DEATH STAR, and still managed to Save the redeemed Kyp Durron.
Everyone likes to hate on it, but I still think it's cool.
I wish instead of the First Order trying to make an even bigger Death Star, Starkiller Base was an attempt to make a poor man's Star Forge.
It would have been a nice explanation for how the First Order managed to shit out entire fleets of Star Destroyers in a short amount of time, somehow unnoticed by anybody or anyone in the New Republic.
The rebels were never good at leading a government. They should’ve had track down the imperial remnants before they could reorganise. They were simply incompetent. When the first order was active, they only saw them as a minor threat.
Well that’s whay happens when half the senators were from the old republic days. There was a legitimate reason for the clone wars and how palpatine got power.
It also could have given credence to Palpatine building a massive fleet in the gap between ROTJ and TROS. It's almost like even just a dash of planning would have gone such a long way when creating the sequel trilogy
The Galaxy Gun. Has the ability to destroy any target, whether it be a ship or a planet, from anywhere in the galaxy. And it can also travel through hyperspace. Kind of like Starkiller base except more practical and capable of traveling.
And, you know, it's explained. And you don't see the hyperspace laser in real space from other sides of the galaxy.
Goddammit starkiller base is stupid
I think the og Death Star is extremely underrated. Everyone just remembers it blowing up but if the Rebels hadn’t had Luke (and a shit ton of luck) there would basically be nothing in the galaxy to stop it. What’s the enemy gonna do send a fleet? The Death Star is basically indestructible from the outside and can one shot capital ships.
And arguably, a star forge is even more useful. The death star can only be in one place and can only take out one target. Its not that usful in a navel battle and its a huge liability to have so much military resouces going into one target. Infinite ships on the other hand would eventually overwhelm any opponent
I love the concept of the dark side force storm. Just using the dark side to tear a hole in time and space and rain destruction down on your enemies.
“The power of this battle station is insignificant compared to the power of the force.”
I have had many discussions with fellow fans on how we would have done things if we were in charge. Fleet ships, setup, deployment, ground troops, armor/camouflage, weapons, vehicles, security, etc.
Interdictors would have been an integral part of fleet reorganization and I would have put in a lot of credits and R&D into making a lot of them. What better way to secure systems and trade routes from allowing the bad guys to get away.
I mean, the Rebels' main strategy is to sneak in, hit hard, and run away.
Why were these things not flying above every Imperial planet? It makes every single one of their missions a suicide mission. Imagine if one had been at Scarif?
Agreed, when the Rebellion started to get more organized, around the time of the Battle of Yavin; the various cells would perform hit and run tactics, supply raids, intelligence gathering, etc.
If I remember correctly, the Interdictor wasn't out in larger numbers until the Battle of Endor. But not enough to make a difference.
The original [Darksaber](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Darksaber_(superweapon)).
"*It's huge. I understand it now, what they've done—they got rid of the extraneous superstructure and channeled all of the power directly into the superlaser. This weapon should be more maneuverable than the Death Star, more easily recharged, able to fire more frequently.*" - Qwi Xux
Man as much as I hated his defection mission in Rogue Squadron on the N64 as a kid, I loved reading about him in that book as a teen. It felt so satisfying having a lot of these EU characters grow and have adventures as I grew
For canon I find the sith temple on Malachor from rebels was cool would love to see how it works.
And for legends the mass shadow generator from Kotor 2 on Malachor 5.
Centerpoint Station, easily. It's versatile, has insane range if handled correctly (not sure if it has galactic range, but definitely a few sectors) and is supremely powerful both offensively and defensively.
Honestly, if someone controlled Centerpoint Station and had full access to all it's systems, they could probably defeat any galactic power with that and a solid intel network alone.
Not sure if this counts but I love the lore behind Starflash. It’s the catalyst for the initial expansion of the Chiss ascendancy, and the secrecy and history behind it is pretty neat. (I haven’t finished all the Thrawn books yet— if starflash comes up again within them plz don’t spoil 🙏)
Jorus C'baoth. He was basically living force superweapon. Had he been a little less crazy, there would have been a really big issue. The whole damn Skywalker family had to step to him. Including Mara Jade and the new jedi recruits. He controlled entire armies with his mind. The force displays in Legends were fun. Remember when Luke's new Jedi students joined their minds together, used the force to take an entire Imperial armada, and literally pushed it somewhere else.
Rian Johnson's Typewriter -- the man managed to single-handedly destroy 40 years' worth of galaxies far, far away with only a few pages shat out on that demonic device
Honestly, I kinda hate the superweapon thing. It was ok in the OT. Redoing it for the ST with Starkiller base was...kinda lame. The Bantam-Spectra era books were loaded with yet another damn superweapon, and it just felt very, very played out.
So I'm gonna say The Death Star, and leave it at that.
That one from kotor 2 that destroyed malachor V it had such a vibe the whole mission with it was just dunno dark and not just a big weapon that goes boom
Boring answer, but easily the Death Star. Has the most lore behind it, it always looks menacing when it shows up, has by far the most lore surrounding it, and a really kick-ass movie where it takes centre stage.
As the image shows; the Star Forge. Revan was unstoppable with that thing, and had Malak not betrayed him, he would have won the war against the Republic.
Honestly, Sun Crusher. I remember reading that book as a kid, and fell in love with it. Something about having the power to detonate a star, and therefore that system, just got to me I guess. On top of having a nearly indestructible fighter craft.
The Star Forge for sure, just imagine If the thing was still around when the Galactic Empire took over, it could produce a infinite amount of Imperial Class Star Destroyers, any variation of TIE-Fighters and any other ship and weapon design they could come up with.
A army of Tie defenders and Super star destroyers, if commanded by some competent admirals then empire would have crushed the rebellion a long time ago. The star forge was hilariously overpowered.
Imagine the bureaucracy
Only if it’s run by Germans
Whatdoyoumean? What have Germans (as a whole, and excluding people with incomplete mustaches) ever managed poorly?
Look up the following things: • Elbphilharmonie Hamburg • Airport Berlin-Brandenburg (BER) • Stuttgart 21 • PKW-Maut Germany plans At least the first three definitely have English sources (Wikipedia or else). The last one was yet another completely mismanaged political project that went against EU-law and cost the taxpayers millions without ever yielding any actual result. And it was clear from the get-go that it would fail, the only person who didn’t get that was the minister for traffic management, who continued to pursue this futile project. The first three are fantastic examples for horribly mismanaged German projects, especially BER and Stuttgart 21. Look it up and it’ll completely and permanently shatter your image of German efficiency.
*_Space_* Germans
So… Imperials?
A competent admiral, hmmm. I think I know a guy
Yeah, if Thrawn had the Star Forge at the time of his legends novels, things would get crazy. His biggest problem would be manning, which was already a problem and why he wanted the accelerated cloning. He'd have to highly automate his warships, but he could take over very quickly. Then again, that might not stop his demise anyway due to a certain bodyguard, but I'm sure Palleon could do a good job carrying his legacy. The Vong would sure be in for a surprise when they showed up, lol. Their advanced units might just waive off the invasion entirely if they could not sabotage or capture the Star Forge.
If the Star Forge existed when the Vong invaded, the Empire would have washed the floor with them. Palpatine was already preparing for the invasion (one of the reasons he created super weapons was to combat their World Ships). It would have been a blood bath
Is that about Palpatine written somewhere? I haven’t read everything yet, NJO I have though and can’t recall anything
Try to get your hands on Rogue Planet and then Outbound Flight. They tie in to the NJO story, but basically Palpatine had a Force vision of an extreme threat to the galaxy and only vaguely picked up the direction. That's why he was so interested in the Unknown Regions and the Chiss in particular. He knew the Republic was far too weak to face the threat and so supposedly that's why he set out to forge the Empire into a wall strong enough to halt the invasion.
There's an excerpt where a Grand Moff (can't remember which one) is in a heated argument with Han Solo about the New Republic's initial incompetence during the outset of the Vong War. Something to the effect of "If Emperor Palpatine were still in power, General, I can assure you thr Yuuzhan Vong wouldn't have set one tattooed toe inside this galaxy!" To which Solo replies "No, what he would have done was sunk billions of credits into some crazy weapon or battlestation called the Vong Smasher or something stupid like that, and you know what? It wouldn't have worked! Some hotshot pilot would have dumped a bomb into an exhaust pipe or a vent and destroyed it! We would have bet the entire galaxy on it and lost!" IIRC.
"The ability to create an infinity amount of star ships is insignificant to the power of the force."
Except that Vong technology was/is immune to the force.
It seems implied that the Star Forge really wasn’t *that* useful, given the Rakata only ever ruled 500 worlds. That is a fraction of a fraction of the Empire’s height. Then again, scale has never been Star Wars’ strong point.
Sci Fi writers constantly fuck up scale
I can't even keep the scale of one fantasy continent consistent, so I give them some grace. Especially when space is like.... unfathomably massive.
> It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
We miss you Douglas !
Indeed.. Like 40k writers telling stories of how Astartes conquering entire planets while numbering thousands or just hundreds.. It doesn't matter how awesome your super soldier is, he can't be in 100 places at once. Planets are fucking huge. Not to mention chapters fighting on several fronts and garrisoning their home planet at once.. When there are supposedly only 1000 guys. Or ordinary troop numbers involved in *planetary* conflicts being ridiculously small.
multi planetary wars somehow having less casualties than the battle of the somme
My thought process is that since the Rakata was such an early species that, while they only conquered only 500 worlds, it was the entire galaxy at the time.
This. It's entirely possible that most of the planets in the galaxy didn't support intelligent life yet. Technically, that's probably already true. If you go far enough back, it's likely way more true.
Non industrialized maybe, but there's too many intelligent species that aren't human for it to be that small a number. I've always seen the galaxy as made up of a lot of under developed species that were basically given technology by trade instead of inventing it themselves. With only a few exceptions.
I'd say it's like comparing earlier empires to the Roman Empire or later empires to the Roman Empire. I'd say going off real history it makes sense for the Infinite Empire to be fairly small compared to other empires in Star Wars.
The 500 worlds thing was so dumb, pretty clear no one who worked on that script every had an editor go he hey the galaxy is huge, that sounds too small. It should be like 50000.
That was pre hyperspace
Didn't the Rakata have their own means of FTL travelling?
They invented the hyperdrive, but that's the thing: it was a new invention, there was no pre-established hyperlanes. Imagine just having invented the automobile but no highways have been built yet, same situation only on a galactic scale.
And it’s the first galactic civilization so 500 worlds is impressive
Yes. But I can't remember what it was
Uh… hyperdrives? The Rakata invented them.
They did invent it but that does not mean it reached what was in kotor levels or OT levels of travel think first car or heck even a carriage 500 worlds is impressive when you start the first galactic civilization
50,000 is still tiny compared to the Empire. Here’s an excerpt I liked from an EU book “Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina.” *”There are four hundred billion stars in the galaxy. Most of them have planets; about half have planets capable of supporting life. About a tenth of those worlds have evolved life of their own, and about one in a thousand of those worlds have evolved intelligent life forms.”*
On the high end, ~20 million planets. ~10 Million on the low end.
Assuming I did my math right, with about 400 billion stars (which is a massive galaxy btw), as a baseline of 51% of stars having planets, and 1 planet per star, you get about 10.2 billion planets that evolve intelligent life. If you assume a galaxy about the same size as the Milky Way, you get about 2.5 billion planets with intelligent life, which seems ridiculously large considering how few species we've even heard of (though to be fair there's like a whole fifth of the galaxy that's relatively unexplored
It wasn't dumb though. It's just that hyperdrives weren't that advanced back then and not nearly as many hyperspace lanes.
Very true but the Infinite Empire lasted for thousands of years. How long did the Empire last? 😏
They should have made that the explanation for the 10K ISDs in ep9 instead of palpatine diverted resources from the still in power empire while they were fighting the rebellion
He had virtually unlimited wealth. I have no problem accepting he built and hid the final order’s fleet. Now what does bother me is where the hell did he find millions of people to crew those ships without anyone finding out about it.
It's weird because having a factory planet has been a concept I think as early as Ep. 7 so I really don't understand why they just did not went with that.
The only downside is that you have to use the dark side to operate it . But it's still my favorite superweapon .
That’s a downside until you remember that the Empire had two incredibly powerful dark side users.
I'd really hoped the Star Forge would somehow play into the sequel trilogy as a means to explain where the fuck these ships came from, but oh well.
Actually... I mean it wouldn't have fixed everything but I wouldn't have been mad about that at all.
A weaker empire built version should have been the evil macguffin in VII. Explains how the FO got so powerful so quickly and instead of another planet killer they have a powerful armada that they invade everywhere with. Then in IX you could keep a lot of the dumb plot and just have Exegol be where an OG Star Forge is pumping out Star Destroyers, except something not as lazy in design as the Xyston. I mean FFS, the Xyston fleet SHOULD have been a mothball fleet of ISD I's that were upgraded but noooo that dumbass had to have them "new" ships built by this stupid powerful cult. Sorry, I digress.
You’re aiming too low… Let the Star Forge make an army of Sun Crushers which are smaller than ISDs but blow up stars and can withstand a partial Death Star superlaser attack
I thought in lore the tie fighters were inferior, it's redeeming quality being that it was cheap, easy to manufacture and easy to replace. It's doctrine of use was overwhelming numbers. All that said, with the ability of the star forge, wouldn't it make more sense to forge unlimited amounts of X Wings, or whatever was the defacto best starfighter?
At least a bit, I think the Empire probably LIKED the design flaws. The replaceability and "You could die at any moment" aspect of them benefits an Empire that wants to make its soldiers feel replaceable and vulnerable, needing the Empire. Keep in mind that Palpatine certainly never cared for anyone's lives except his own and a few close associates and he was always confident in his victory, even until just moments before his death. He had contingencies in case the Empire fell but he KNEW Luke was either going to turn and become his apprentice or die, and he KNEW he set the ultimate trap for the rebels.
Wasn't it revealed in the game though that using the Star Forge too much results in a plague that strips people off Force-sensitivity like what happened to the Rakatans? The Star Forge is a dark side nexus after all.
Wasn't it a plague that killed them off?
I recall the Star Forge being the cause of that plague.
I had always wished the Star Forge was the secret behind the swift rise of the First Order. No need for Death Star 4 Planet Edition or the armada of Death Star Destroyers.
That was my theory before The Rise of Skywalker came out. It would’ve been a nice callback and worked better than just a bunch of unnamed rich people somehow bankrolling the First Order without a return of investment or the New Republic realizing.
I'd would say it would eventually reach a limit when the star it was draining ran out of sufficient mass to sustain fusion. However, I estimate that'd be after a hundred thousand years of continuous use.
The star forge was also fun for being a giant ancient technological factory, rather than another planet destroying death weapon.
Exactly the reason why I like it so much. Planet killers get very old very fast, this is a far more unique approach. A near sentient space station outliving it's creators and the empire that build it, fuled by the Dark Side and the raw energy of a star.
Centerpoint Station. I actually liked the lore implications of an ancient civilization that could manufacture star systems. I hope they bring some aspect of it back in the new canon.
Aye, same here. Also, it's so versatile. Even just militarily it can do so much both offensively and defensively, and there's a ton of applications for it beyond that.
I think there is a chance we will see it explored eventually. I honestly really hope we see the Abeloth storyline explored in canon at some point, it was one of my favorite lore tidbits of the EU.
Abeloth would have been such a good choice for the antagonist of the sequels. And she might have been originally, and the original concept for the main villain had it be a woman that was even "beautiful to look at". She absolutely fills the void of needing to up the stakes while not devaluing the ot.
Damn, haven’t even thought about it. It’s always sad to me and f I think about in how many unique and interesting directions it could have gone vs. what actually happened.
It's ties to Abeloth and the Maw were also really intriguing to me. The first time I'd heard of the Maw was in Star Wars: Rogue Squadron II. There was a mission called "Prisoners of the Maw" where you had to free captured Rebels that the Empire was holding captive. You had to attack a prison colony on an asteroid that was close to the Maw itself. In the first part of the mission, as you're flying to the target, you can see the Maw in the background. It's a colossal mass of black holes that the Thuruht hive used Centerpoint Station to pull together in order to keep Abeloth trapped. It's always been such a fascinating part of Star Wars history to me.
Don’t know if it counts but i love the Eclipse Class Dreadnought from legends
It annoys me so much that TROS used the Palpatine Reborn plot and the idea of Death Star lasers on a Star Destroyer, both of which are from Dark Empire but it didn't use Palpatine Reborn's flagship, the Eclipse, the original Star Destroyer with a super laser. There's concept art of the Eclipse for TROS so they actually considered using it and decided to go with a fleet of generic destroyers with super lasers instead. They easily could've had the Eclipse be the big target the heroes destroy to take down the whole fleet even with that idea.
They could afford thousand star destroyers with a death star laser. But couldn’t afford a damn navigation device. The navigation tower was dumb that it wasn‘t even enjoyable
Yep and the idea of having several ships controlled by one has been done in Legends without being remotely that level of stupid. A cargo convoy all being controlled by the lead ship so only one pilot is needed for example. They could've had the TROS fleet similarly tied to the Eclipse. Not out of necessity but because Palpatine wants absolute control over it. No margin for human error or mutiny. It makes the Eclipse a big obvious target for the heroes but there's actually some logic behind why Palpatine would have one big target that could render his entire fleet helpless if destroyed.
The Dark Force dreadnoughts spring to mind too
I cannot for my own health get into how badly on even a basic level of storytelling that trilogy was. I'm not saying the other too trilogies were perfect... at all. They had wide open possibilities and that's what they chose? It's very rare that I could confidently do a better job. At least in so far as what the bad guy's wanted and were doing.
It's hilarious that about everything Dark Empire did was better than Rise of Skywalker, even though DE was and still is hated. A lot of the ideas are kinda good, like Palpatine transitioning to a magiocracy led by sith cultists out in the open. Or actually seeing him switch bodies and the insane amount of resources he was able to spend on just those bodies, only to see Luke destroy them. Seeing Palpatine create a damn black hole would have been a bit more terrifying than the lighting too, it could start small and seemingly about to fade away only to then be released and massively expand.
Not only are they generic but also just SCALED UP generic destroyers which leads to stupid problems like giant windows and rooms.
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/265695/short-satire-about-a-comically-upscaled-spaceship
Exactly. Just imagine someone working at their station and sitting in a giant chair, barely touching the console like a child just because Palpatine (read: Lazy Graphics team) decided to just use an old model but scale it up.
Cos JJ is a hack.
The original Episode 9 script had Finn, Rey, Poe, and BB-8 commandeer an Eclipse Class Star Dreadnought from drydock over Kuat. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Duel_of_the_Fates https://imgur.com/gallery/GwFZReL
Oh shit thanks for the links. I had seen some of this concept art but not most of it
This one made the most sense for sure.
Oh it for sure counts, since the superlaser was powerful enough to devastate planets.
It does count! It was emperor palpatines personal flagship and had the same purpose like the death star.
The cloaking devices on the asteroids. I guess the super weapon would be Thrawn's mind
i think you’re thinking of the expanse
No, this happened in the EU. Thrawn dropped rocks fitted with cloaking tech into orbit over Coruscant, forcing Coruscant to keep its planetary shield up and keeping the planet out of the war.
Don’t forget when Thrawn used mining equipment to hijack an entire New Republic fleet and the NR was forced to destroy their own ships.
And when he put cloaked ships under a planetary shield and shot at the shield from outside so it looked like the shield was useless
damn that’s fkin wild
You really should read the original Zahn trilogy, arguably best Star Wars books ever
Fuckin Marco Inaros
BELTALOWDA!!!
No it happened in the Last Command. Thrawn deployed cloaked asteroids around Coruscant to create a blockade.
Star forge definitely
Yeah. I loved the little subversion that it creates instead of destroys.
I agree. Way better than the usual planet-destroying superweapons that the SW franchise is littered with.
Yep. With that kind of weapon in the lore, a bad guy doesn’t have to be super popular or a political mastermind to amass a dangerous army. He can be just a truly deranged psychopath with a star forge.
He still needs either an army, or to use Droids, and droids aren't great. But it dramatically simplifies your logistics, as long as you have people.
That's what made Revan the perfect person to find and utilize it. He was extremely popular with everyone, even his enemies, AND a military genius. He didn't need it to pose a threat to the entire galaxy, but with it, he was all but unstoppable. I love Revan's history and introduction, but God do I hate how they used him post KOTOR.
The star forge forges mini death stars
Or it forges new star forges. Forges forging forges, how perverse!
Shut. me. down!
And also it’s relation with the dark side it’s really interesting
Yeah it’s an interesting twist
The World Devastator. Factory robot ships that used tractor beams to tear up all the matter on a planet and converted it into new elements in their molecular furnace, and then used those elements as raw materials to crank out endless droid fighters and war machines.
Bro get me in a V-wing and that thing is toast.
V-wing. Hit the turbo. Cluster missiles at the feet. Mon Cal saved.
Freaking loved taking those things down in Rogue Squadron. Goated game
Yes. Loved these
Death Star II. Looks so much cooler than the original Death Star and I love the scenes when it blows up the Rebel cruisers
Sun Crusher. Love me an indestructible ice cream cone that’s more powerful than Starkiller Base and a fraction the size of a Xyston-class Star Destroyer. /s
Death Star: *I can destroy a whole planet.* Sun Crusher: *Hold my beer.* entire solar system go BOOM
Also it could be piloted by a single person.
I just love that it’s still a viable ship in a fight even after its guns have been disabled. “Took out my lasers? Fine. RAMMING SPEED!!!”
Daala fleet go boom
It took a literal black hole to destroy it too >!Which wouldn’t even be an issue if Legends Luke piloted it!<
The fact that when Han Solo Stole the thing the first thing he had to take on was a Star Destroyer, and he took it out by RAMMING the BRIDGE! Badass moment and established the Sun Crusher as one of the most interesting Macguffin's in Star Wars History. LATER They sank it in the depths of the gas giant Yavin and Kyp Durron recovered it using the Dark Side (and a long-dead Sith Lord's energy). It blew up entire Star Systems at his hands, and had one of the most emotionally terrifying scenes on the Imperial Training world of Carida.... (IYKYK). It finally died KILLING A DEATH STAR, and still managed to Save the redeemed Kyp Durron. Everyone likes to hate on it, but I still think it's cool.
I wish instead of the First Order trying to make an even bigger Death Star, Starkiller Base was an attempt to make a poor man's Star Forge. It would have been a nice explanation for how the First Order managed to shit out entire fleets of Star Destroyers in a short amount of time, somehow unnoticed by anybody or anyone in the New Republic.
The rebels were never good at leading a government. They should’ve had track down the imperial remnants before they could reorganise. They were simply incompetent. When the first order was active, they only saw them as a minor threat.
Well that’s whay happens when half the senators were from the old republic days. There was a legitimate reason for the clone wars and how palpatine got power.
It also could have given credence to Palpatine building a massive fleet in the gap between ROTJ and TROS. It's almost like even just a dash of planning would have gone such a long way when creating the sequel trilogy
Somehow, Palpatine built a huge fleet with planet-destroying capability.
Hope
I heard Rebellions are built on it.
Is Palpatine classed as a super weapon? Dude can shit out Star Destroyers with Death Star lasers from thin air.
You’re out of line but you got a point. Palps is an organic star forge
The friends we made along the way
Does the Thought Bomb count?
That’s a good one. Hearing about Bane reading the thoughts of the people trapped in there…
The Galaxy Gun. Has the ability to destroy any target, whether it be a ship or a planet, from anywhere in the galaxy. And it can also travel through hyperspace. Kind of like Starkiller base except more practical and capable of traveling.
And, you know, it's explained. And you don't see the hyperspace laser in real space from other sides of the galaxy. Goddammit starkiller base is stupid
Ventress. Why dump trillions of credits into these superweapons when one bamf is more effective anyway?
And discreet!!!
I think the og Death Star is extremely underrated. Everyone just remembers it blowing up but if the Rebels hadn’t had Luke (and a shit ton of luck) there would basically be nothing in the galaxy to stop it. What’s the enemy gonna do send a fleet? The Death Star is basically indestructible from the outside and can one shot capital ships.
Definitely The Star Forge, i’m really sick of planet destroyers, I get it’s the most obvious choice for your Super Weapon but it’s so overdone.
The star forge is problaby something Thrawn would have loved, he would have unlimited ships and fighters.
He would’ve be unstoppable
The only thing he would be short of would be people.
Atleast he can give many people jobs
Could use droids
And arguably, a star forge is even more useful. The death star can only be in one place and can only take out one target. Its not that usful in a navel battle and its a huge liability to have so much military resouces going into one target. Infinite ships on the other hand would eventually overwhelm any opponent
Navel battle you say? I’m intrigued…
Death Star
I love the concept of the dark side force storm. Just using the dark side to tear a hole in time and space and rain destruction down on your enemies. “The power of this battle station is insignificant compared to the power of the force.”
Idk if it counts, but Interdictors. Takes “you can run, but you can’t hide” to “actually, I’m denying you either”
I have had many discussions with fellow fans on how we would have done things if we were in charge. Fleet ships, setup, deployment, ground troops, armor/camouflage, weapons, vehicles, security, etc. Interdictors would have been an integral part of fleet reorganization and I would have put in a lot of credits and R&D into making a lot of them. What better way to secure systems and trade routes from allowing the bad guys to get away.
I mean, the Rebels' main strategy is to sneak in, hit hard, and run away. Why were these things not flying above every Imperial planet? It makes every single one of their missions a suicide mission. Imagine if one had been at Scarif?
Agreed, when the Rebellion started to get more organized, around the time of the Battle of Yavin; the various cells would perform hit and run tactics, supply raids, intelligence gathering, etc. If I remember correctly, the Interdictor wasn't out in larger numbers until the Battle of Endor. But not enough to make a difference.
The original [Darksaber](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Darksaber_(superweapon)). "*It's huge. I understand it now, what they've done—they got rid of the extraneous superstructure and channeled all of the power directly into the superlaser. This weapon should be more maneuverable than the Death Star, more easily recharged, able to fire more frequently.*" - Qwi Xux
RIP Crix Madine ✌🏻
Man as much as I hated his defection mission in Rogue Squadron on the N64 as a kid, I loved reading about him in that book as a teen. It felt so satisfying having a lot of these EU characters grow and have adventures as I grew
Oh wild
Death Star II I just love the deception of it's design
Death Star. I’m a simple man with simple pleasures.
The malevolence
How the fuck did he get that shirt on
“The dark-side of the force is a pathway to many abilities… some consider to be unnatural“
Frontside zipper
For canon I find the sith temple on Malachor from rebels was cool would love to see how it works. And for legends the mass shadow generator from Kotor 2 on Malachor 5.
Mace Windu from the first Clone Wars animated series.
I'd say the 2nd death star, but it wasn't technically finished.
The Verpine shatter rifle and its variants. The most advanced slug-thrower in Star Wars.
It's cheesy and corny, not to mention legends but I'll never forget the Darksaber.
Sun Crusher, it's just a fun design and an absolutely insane concept
Centerpoint Station, easily. It's versatile, has insane range if handled correctly (not sure if it has galactic range, but definitely a few sectors) and is supremely powerful both offensively and defensively. Honestly, if someone controlled Centerpoint Station and had full access to all it's systems, they could probably defeat any galactic power with that and a solid intel network alone.
super star destroyer
This dude’s head.
Not sure if this counts but I love the lore behind Starflash. It’s the catalyst for the initial expansion of the Chiss ascendancy, and the secrecy and history behind it is pretty neat. (I haven’t finished all the Thrawn books yet— if starflash comes up again within them plz don’t spoil 🙏)
Jorus C'baoth. He was basically living force superweapon. Had he been a little less crazy, there would have been a really big issue. The whole damn Skywalker family had to step to him. Including Mara Jade and the new jedi recruits. He controlled entire armies with his mind. The force displays in Legends were fun. Remember when Luke's new Jedi students joined their minds together, used the force to take an entire Imperial armada, and literally pushed it somewhere else.
Patrick 81
Dex’s cooking
The death star
Eclipse-class Star Dreadnought. I would have funneled the funds meant for the Death Star into making a fleet of Eclipse instead.
The DEATH STAR....
Jar jar binks
The nebula killing tiny boy of doom sun crusher
Sun Crusher.
Depends. If we're including Legends, definitely the World Devastators
The Star Forge.
Rian Johnson's Typewriter -- the man managed to single-handedly destroy 40 years' worth of galaxies far, far away with only a few pages shat out on that demonic device
My least is Kathleen Kennedy
Honestly, I kinda hate the superweapon thing. It was ok in the OT. Redoing it for the ST with Starkiller base was...kinda lame. The Bantam-Spectra era books were loaded with yet another damn superweapon, and it just felt very, very played out. So I'm gonna say The Death Star, and leave it at that.
At this point they are just *weapons*.
Jar Jar Binks.
That one from kotor 2 that destroyed malachor V it had such a vibe the whole mission with it was just dunno dark and not just a big weapon that goes boom
The Mass Shadow Generator! Had to scroll way too far to see it referenced. As a kid, I thought that name was the coolest thing ever.
Centerpoint station. Because it wasn’t a weapon.
Boring answer, but easily the Death Star. Has the most lore behind it, it always looks menacing when it shows up, has by far the most lore surrounding it, and a really kick-ass movie where it takes centre stage.
The Malevolence kinda counts, it was certainly treated like a super weapon. I found that dreadnaught very cool
GALAXY GUN (or the eclipse but it didn’t totally destroy a planet so eh) also world devastator
The Eclipse was fucking badass.
Trandoshan shotgun
Oh "The Holdo Maneuver" of course Yecch
EE-3 and Jango Fett's blasters. They sound so good. oh the question was "super weapon" my mistake
Star forge or sun crusher. These weapons make the death star look like child’s play.
Thrawn. Just Thrawn. He is a Super Weapon on his own.
As the image shows; the Star Forge. Revan was unstoppable with that thing, and had Malak not betrayed him, he would have won the war against the Republic.
Absolutely 100% the Star Forge. Destroying a planet is fucking stupid in terms of resource management.
For me it would have to be the Sun Crusher. An indestructible ship that can ignite a Sun is just awesome and scary.
Honestly, Sun Crusher. I remember reading that book as a kid, and fell in love with it. Something about having the power to detonate a star, and therefore that system, just got to me I guess. On top of having a nearly indestructible fighter craft.