The Starkiller Missile

[Reshmar]

So lets figure this thing out shall we.

Alot was thrown out the other day. I think the first thing is to finalize the Target or Targets on the Board. Were we going with the Blow up the trashed Death Star idea? If so how do we do it without killing Endor? Not having to deal with "what happens to the surrounding area" makes things alot easier.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Endor will be fine, it's just that pesky moon of it's that we'll have to worry about. ;)

[Captain Untouchable]

For the benefit of those of us who weren't in the chat where this was discussed / decided, could you explain what a Starkiller Missile is, and why it's nuclear deterrent levels of terrible? The Starkiller as listed on Wookieepedia (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Starkiller_%28superweapon%29) is skant on details, but sounds like it's something to screw with ships, not blow up planets. It sounds more like you're talking about something like the Resonance torpedo (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Resonance_torpedo) from the Sun Crusher (which would kill suns, Star Trek: Generations style), or possibly something else entirely.

I'm also not aware of what the Death Star remnant entails. I know that our version of events stopped it going kaboom, but what is left, and how come it's just been kicking around there for what, six years?

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I believe it's a memorial/been used for parts.

I figure the Ewoks weren't Stormtrooper killing machines in our continuity and wrote up a possible explanation for the events of our battle of Endor (http://www.sw-fans.net/wiki/index.php/Battle_of_Endor)...

[Park Kraken]

Sounds more like a self-propelled version of a Galaxy Gun Projectile, without needing the Galaxy Gun itself to be fired.

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

[Morgan Evanar]

IMO the Suncrusher doesn't really lend itself to a desirable outcome. You give up an entire system to blow up what is probably 1 populated world. I just don't buy into the tech either. KJA wanted another dumb super-weapon. At least ours is based on something canon. My understanding of the current tech is that it slags planets, not explodes them.

[Dasquian Belargic]

From what I understood in the chat, the missile just decimates a planet, doesn't destroy it. Also it's mostly just a MacGuffin to force the Empire/Alliance into a cold war state or face mutually assured destruction.

One point that we reached a fairly even consensus on in the chat was that these weapons wouldn't ever be getting used IC, so we didn't necessarily need to know every detail about them.. since they're essentially just a plot device.

[Kale]

Point of clarification - when we did our "Years From Now" thread a while back, I suggested we introduce a planet-killing interstellar ballistic missile to enforce a standoff between the Empire and the Alliance. I think I proposed the name "Omega missile" for the weapon, but if I recall, Charley called it the "Starkiller missile" in one of his posts, and the name stuck. I had no idea there was a weapon by the same name on Wookieepedia, but this weapon is completely unrelated.

Second, in the thread that introduces my Cizerack Huntress Captain (http://sw-fans.net/forum/showthread.php?t=21150), I introduced a weapon called the saanja torpedo, a bastardization of the Death Star hypermatter laser and plasma torpedoes from the tabletop game Starfleet Battles. When the idea came up to use Starkillers again for our new Cold War paradigm, I suggested it could have grown out of the saanja torpedo technology. I'll admit it was a bit of a self-indulgent idea, and I'm not married to it, but I think others liked the idea of it originating as Cizerack tech.

There were a lot of suggestions thrown around about how the weapon actually works, but not a lot of consensus. Here's what we ended up with, as best as I can recall:
The Rebel Alliance developed these weapons from technology purchased from the Cizerack.
The Rebels demonstrated the weapon by destroying an Imperial world that was lifeless except for an AT-AT production facility. They announced the attack to give the inhabitants a chance to evacuate.
They may have also targeted the Death Star's remains around Endor, both as a demonstration and as a symbolic gesture.
Some time after that, the Empire acquired the weapons as well, and an accord was reached between the Empire and the Alliance to prevent galactic devastation.
Starkillers are interstellar, hyperspace-capable vehicles durable/agile enough to be very difficult to shoot down in transit. They can only be launched from planetary or sufficiently large orbital platforms.Beyond that, we have a lot of room to play. I like the idea that they're fairly large, on the order of fifty meters or more, and that they feature droid brain navigation systems and deflector shields to increase their survivability. They may also have some sort of hyperdense shielding around the warhead so it can penetrate deep into the target's mantle before detonating. It doesn't necessarily even need to EXPLODE! a planet the way the Death Star did - turning it into a ball of molten iron is probably sufficient.

The idea has also been floated that they destroy stars, not planets. At the risk of alluding to the Sun Crusher, I'm open to that - it certainly makes them more terrifying and even more an affront to nature if they're actually wiping stars out of the sky.

Either way, the point is that these weapons are an option nobody really wants. Slag a planet or destroy it - either way you're losing a whole world of resources from the galaxy in addition to massive loss of life. Both sides would much rather capture a target intact than destroy it. It is a weapon of either desperation or intimidation; otherwise it has even less tactical value than the Death Star.

[Park Kraken]

True and there are plenty of possible reasons to get rid of them down the road if we have enough of an increase in activity to warrant full fledge warfare breaking out again, including; Proliferation to the point of the Empire and Alliance getting rid of them all, one side or both developing effective enough countermeasures to render the missiles moot, etc etc.

[Captain Untouchable]

From what I understood in the chat, the missile just decimates a planet, doesn't destroy it. Also it's mostly just a MacGuffin to force the Empire/Alliance into a cold war state or face mutually assured destruction.

When you say "decimates", are you talking about it just damaging the surface of the planet, makes all it's volcanoes erupt, burns off it's atmosphere so everything dies, or something along those sort of lines? A planet-killing weapon, rather than a planet-destroying weapon?

Something like that would be pretty cool: a weapon that turns an Earth-like world into a Mars or a Venus.

[Dasquian Belargic]

Yep, that was my understanding of it.

[Droo]

When you say "decimates", are you talking about it just damaging the surface of the planet, makes all it's volcanoes erupt, burns off it's atmosphere so everything dies, or something along those sort of lines? A planet-killing weapon, rather than a planet-destroying weapon?

Something like that would be pretty cool: a weapon that turns an Earth-like world into a Mars or a Venus.

Basically that, yes, scorches the surface and makes it uninhabitable.

[Kale]

I actually like that explanation more than mine. :) And it doesn't need to be instantaneous. The fallout at the point of impact may be terrible, but the far side of the planet might not feel the effects for days. The process, however, is irreversible, and the result is a completely uninhabitable and useless world.

[Captain Untouchable]

Presumably then, a weapon like that could be tested just about anywhere.

Rather than targeting Endor for the weapons demonstration - which, while not particularly important, is more or less an innocent bystander as far as planets go - would it make sense to target something symbolic? Are there any planets related to the development of the Death Star that weren't already destroyed? Is there a planet that is uninhabited because the Empire massacred the population: something where we won't hurt anyone if we make it uninhabitable, but can be making a statement by doing so?

Or are we looking more for a Hiroshima or a Nagasaki: somewhere we can attack with one of these weapons and then be left thinking "my god, what have we done?"

[Kale]

The idea wasn't to attack Endor, but to attack the remains of the Death Star in orbit. The weapon we're talking about is probably powerful enough to turn the Death Star hulk into a ball of molten iron, but may also have fallout consequences for the Ewoks.

Reshmar raised objections to the Alliance using superweapons at all, so I think it's fair to say the Alliance will be very careful about the message they're sending with this weapon. Attacking a barren world that's only being used to support the Imperial war machine sounds like a best option. Grand Moff Tarkin might consider it too remote for an effective demonstration, but the militaristic Empire will get the message.

The other thing was that we wanted to avoid taking away a canon location for future storytelling.

[Captain Untouchable]

I'm not sure it necessarily follows that something capable of blowing up the Death Star is also capable of making a planet inhabitable. Blowing up the Death Star remnant seems like something the Alliance might want to do as a show of force / political statement, but that's something that could just as easily be accomplished by a buttload of ships.

In fact arguably, that might be more significant. Not only have we demonstrated that we have a planet-killing weapon at Location A, we've also demonstrated that with our new Hapan and Cizerack allies we have a formidable enough fleet to turn the Death Star to slag.

[Park Kraken]

An Imperial Depot World would probably be the ideal candidate for a target; a mass storage facility for weapons or perhaps an Imperial Drydock for Mothballed warships.

You could probably increase or decrease the yield of the weapon to have the desired amount of devastation inflicted.

[Kale]

Sorry, I wasn't very clear in my post! I was still talking about the demonstration as a two-pronged attack: one weapon to take out the Death Star, another to take out an Imperial military world. The plan in the chat was to arrange two demonstrations of the weapon's power. Attacking the Death Star serves notice to the Empire that such a battlestation is now obsolete. Attacking the planet shows the full effects of what the weapon can do.

The planet we were planning to slag is a world with nothing on it but an AT-AT factory. Charley named it, but I can't remember off the top of my head. The point is the planet is non-canon; thus we're not removing any canon planets from the map.

[Dasquian Belargic]

Dar Akuz I think was the name of the planet?

[Captain Untouchable]

My reservation is that blowing up superweapons isn't a very noble thing to do. The Empire has been calling us terrorists all along, and hey look: we just let off two big bombs, and are threatening to do it on a populated planet this time.

We don't just need to show the Empire that we mean business: we need to show the whole galaxy that we do. We don't just want to get the Empire to back off: we want planets to decide to join up with us instead of the Empire, which means showing that we have a fleet that means business, that we have the resources to provide them with what the Empire will no longer be providing, that we're willing to give them the Senate that the Empire deprived them of, etc.

We have to seem like the good guys across the board... otherwise, all we're doing is using our nukes to hold half the galaxy to ransom, effectively.

[Kale]

The threat shouldn't be "Next time it's Corellia," but "Next time it's Fondor," or another world that's vital to the Imperial war machine. The threat is to destroy the Empire's ability to make war. We can point out that when the Empire had this ability, their first act was to destroy a peaceful, populated world as an overt act of terror. We take this extreme action only at the greatest point of need.

Granted, that's the propaganda the Alliance tries to disperse. Imperial propaganda will be very different. And I expect the weapons to be extremely controversial among the Alliance worlds. There are war-hawks who see them as an opportunity to bring the Empire to its knees, and there are idealists who believe the weapon is an affront that should be destroyed and forgotten.

Regardless, the threat may really be a bluff, as the Alliance Senate would probably never vote to strike even as militarized a planet as Fondor with its 5 billion inhabtants. Also, once the Empire gains their own missiles, the Alliance will feel forced to maintain their own arsenal as a matter of self-preservation.

Playing out those dynamics is part of the appeal for me. It will and should shake the Alliance's image as the incorruptible heroes of the galaxy, and it will have far-reaching and unforeseen consequences.

If that's not the story we want to write, though, I'm definitely willing to talk about alternatives.

[Captain Untouchable]

I don't disagree with you about those dynamics being interesting.

I'm just worried about story credibility. If all we've done is morally questionable things, then why have all of these hundreds of planets suddenly flocked to join us? Is the Alliance of Free Planets the crowd of high schoolers standing around cheering because someone finally stood up against the bully and broke his nose?

[Ben Merasska]

I don't disagree with you about those dynamics being interesting.

I'm just worried about story credibility. If all we've done is morally questionable things, then why have all of these hundreds of planets suddenly flocked to join us? Is the Alliance of Free Planets the crowd of high schoolers standing around cheering because someone finally stood up against the bully and broke his nose?

Yes. Yes it is.:p

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I was under the impression that a lot of planets, if given a choice and protection, would like to join the Rebellion/Alliance/NR. I'm not sure how else defeating the Empire at Endor led to the Rebellion becoming the NR without the member planets of the Empire refusing to join.

[Park Kraken]

I think the main concern here is that the brutality of the Empire is the reason a lot off planets joined the Alliance, with nothing symbolizing that brutality better than Superweapons.

[Reshmar]

Wow I started this and went to dinner and BOOM! anyway.

The weapon would have to Destroy the planet not just slag it. Slagging a planet with an Super Star Destroyer takes less than 20 minutes. An Aurora-class Star Destroyer was designed for just that reason. If the goal is to render a world inhabitable Just say the word and Fleet will make it rain. I do not see how a weapon that only renders a planet barren would really even worry the Empire. They just park a Torpedo Sphere over a world and do the same thing. It would have to be something that destroys a planet in one shot.

[Morgan Evanar]

Because in a missile format there isn't an effective defense against it.

I imagine that instead of hitting an inhabited world, the rebellion would go after something close by, like vaping Mars instead of Earth.

[Reshmar]

I can think of ways to defend against it. CIS era Flak cannons, Group of Lancer Frigates just for starts. but anyway. This has to be something that can render a planets shielding useless. I suggest a advanced Elint system with a cloaking device and Bakuran HIMS system (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hyperwave_inertial_momentum_sustainer).

Ok so just make it un-Inhabitable.

It would have to be able to accelerate instantly after droping out of hyperspace to a very fast speed. Having a Plasma charge built in would help it get thru the shielding. As far as what people are wanting it to do A massive FAE charge would work. Something that igniting the Oxygen. Maybe a high speed orbit seeding the Atmosphere then Boom!

[Kale]

The key has to be the delivery system rather than the raw power, then. Fleets can be tracked, but a single missile base nestled deep in Alliance territory can target half the planets in the Empire with no early warning.

You know a lot more about SW tech than I do, Reshmar. Would it be possible for a missile to drop out of hyperspace with a higher velocity than ships typically have? Without any squishy organic components to protect, inertial dampers may not be as critical. I'm imagining using crazy-accurate nav computers to plot jumps that can drop a missile at high speed within seconds of impact from any given trajectory. That would pretty much nullify picket ships or even planetary defense guns.

A secondary charge on the nose of the missile to bust planetary shields is a great idea. The saanja torpedo even had a shield-stripping "enveloping" mode, so that fits in line with the missile being an evolutionary jump from Cizerack tech. That may be a later refinement over the original weapon; I assume planetary shields are expensive to maintain and probably aren't common on outlying worlds?

I think we want to keep the basic concept fairly simple if possible. Delivery systems may grow more advanced and complex as the technology improves, but the arms race should largely take a back seat to our political squabbling, espionage, and poxy warfare.

[Reshmar]

Pre-Reset I developed something called the Terminator Velocity Cannon. Was a mass accelerated 500cm warhead that had a sensor which impacted the shielding first and set off a group of Plasma Charges. That and the velocity of the warhead basiclly made shields useless.

Dropping out of hyperspace is what it is. You drop out of hyperspace and the sublight drives take over basiclly. The best thing is a big engine attached to it to accelerate it quickly.

With a HIMS, the missile could drop out of hyperspace right on top of the planet. even behind the orbital defenses. It would take a super fast Nav Computer and exact tracking. You would have to make sure nothing was between it and where it was coming out of hyperspace.

The less time it is in subspace the better its chance of hitting its target.