Starkillers: How do they Work? (Poll)

[Rev Solomon]

So, there's been some continued confusion about Starkiller missiles (http://theholo.net/forum/showthread.php?55562-What-s-Going-on-in-Our-Star-Wars-Universe-A-Very-Brief-Summary-of-SW-Roleplaying), the nuclear deterrent basis for the current cold war between the Empire and the Alliance. The problem is that they were conceived as planet-killing weapons, but we imported the name we used in the Years From Now thread, so most people understandably assume that they do what the name says: kill stars.

For plot purposes, it really doesn't matter which they do. They're horrible weapons that should never be used, and they bear the threat of mutual annihilation. However, we still need a consensus on how they actually work so we know whether characters are worried about seeing a bright flash on the horizon or about the sky going dark. My opinion is that we need to either change the name or change the nature of the weapon so it's no longer confusing. But that's just me! What do you guys think?

Option 1: Change the name. The consensus we had at the end of our previous discussion (http://sw-fans.net/forum/showthread.php?23232-The-Starkiller-Missile) is that the missile slags planets but doesn't explode them. A fiery wave expands across the surface of the planet from the point of impact until the whole thing is reduced to a ball of radioactive cinders. Off the top of my head, some possible names for such a weapon might be: Planetkiller missile? Worldender missile? Omega missile?

Option 2: Change the weapon. I personally don't like the idea of a system-shattering supernova like the Galaxy Gun/Suncrusher, but I could see the missile rendering a star inert and cold. It would take a few days for the planet to become uninhabitable, so if you have a planet with a small population, you could conceivably evacuate before everything freezes. You'd wind up with an abandoned world of frozen cities under a dark star, which sounds like a pretty eerie setting for a thread.

Option 3: Leave it alone and just explain it clearly: Starkiller missiles are for slagging planets, not killing stars.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I like Option 2 and your idea for it quenching a star.

[Rev Solomon]

Just wanted to add, we've got some new people around here, too, and I want them to feel welcome to join in this discussion. Part of the reason I brought it up is that we want to be able to have an easily digestible description of our setting so newcomers have an idea what's going on in our universe, and that's easier if we don't have to contend with confusing names.

I'm going to vote for changing the weapon for a few reasons:



We've used the name Starkiller in plenty of threads by now, and it would be awkward to change at this point.
This weapon was developed by the Rebellion, and as horrifying as a star-dousing missile is, at least it's not something you deploy directly against a population.
To some extent you can guard a planet with some sort of defense grid. It's much harder to do the same for a star, making the missiles even more pernicious.
I find that image of frozen ruins on a sun-darkened world to be really evocative. :ohno


I think it's a low-impact solution that also makes the weapons a bit more unique in their effect. Of course, anything that significantly changes the state of a star in a timescale smaller than millions of years is practically magic, but so was the Death Star in the first place.

[Droo]

I've always liked the idea of a planet-slagging weapon. I had no objection to them being called Starkillers, despite their function, however, after reading Option 2, I'm totally on board with the idea of a star-quenching missile. It's horrifying, but also makes sense from Alliance point of view, since it doesn't lend itself as overtly towards collateral damage.

[Tear]

While, I too, liked the idea of a planet-slagging weapon I never found it suitable for the use by the Alliance. I always thought the Alliance were more or less situated as a beacon of hope and good versus the more oppressive and destructive Empire. For the Alliance to use such a weapon on a highly populated Imperial world never sat right with me. It would be the whole sale slaughter of billions by a faction which exists to prevent such horrors, ie: Alderaan. Changing the weapon to make a star go cold seems much more likely for reasons already pointed out.

[Rev Solomon]

Back when we were discussing it, there were a few ideas tossed around as the site of demonstration for the Starkillers. One was that a Starkiller had been fired on the remains of the Death Star II (which in our continuity was crippled, but not outright destroyed in the battle of Endor). Another was that a Starkiller was fired on a moon or planetoid that was uninhabited save for an Imperial factory producing some other horrible kind of weapon. In any case, we envisioned the decision to use a Starkiller as a matter of intense debate among Rebel leaders who remembered Alderaan all too well.

I don't recall that we ever reached a consensus, and there were still people who felt the weapon was wholly out of character for the Rebellion, even if it was only used against another target, a military target. Even if it quenches suns instead of slags planets, I feel Starkillers still should represent a loss of innocence for the Alliance.

[Zereth Lancer]

Option 2/3.

I really like the name Starkiller, it feels very starwarsy, even though the name is misleading. I don't think we NEED to change anything, but we definitely could if it improves the concept. Actual star killing is okay. I don't think it's any less horrible. In fact, it's more horrible, because destroying a star/sun could ruin several planets instead of just one, making it even less logical for the Alliance to develop and deploy. We could always change them into smaller explosives capable of wiping out entire cities rather than planets. With a more tactical strike angle the Rebels could have developed them for the purpose of wiping out war factories and munition depots. War targets instead of civilian.

If we wanted to still get to planet destroyers than the Empire could have counter developed the Alliance's missiles with their own, making them bigger and capable of destroying planets, which the Alliance matched with their own, thus the current stand off situation. If we didn't want to go back to destroying whole planets, long range strike missiles are still a pretty big deterrent. The Empire could threaten to hit major cities on Alliance held planets, thus causing the Alliance to stop bombing military targets in fear of the retaliation.

[Eluna Thals]

I prefer them to be as-is, but I'm not really steadfast on that preference so I could certainly go with option two if that's how the winds blow.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

I've always liked the name, since in my mind it's a sort of homage to Luke's original last name. But that's just me.

Changing what they do makes sense in terms of the lost innocence of the Alliance while still keeping some bare shred of mercy in the form of evacuation time. The thought of a cold, dead world is enticing in terms of story setting, but I also think that there would be some folks who could make a living on a world like that. That's not to say starkillers should be used; IMO they're only around to generate our Cold War setting, and I would take a long hard look at any notion brought up to actually have one in play.

[Talus]

BROKEN ARROW! Renegede Rebel extremists steal a starkiller and are planning to use it on Coruscant! Empire and Alliance must work together WOAH lol

I think Option 2 is really cool, essentially render the star inert.

[Halajiin Rabeak]

How about this: There are two types of Starkiller missiles. The one developed by the Rebel Alliance is a sun-quencher. But, as some systems might have multiple planets, and perhaps only one needs to be taught a lesson, perhaps the Empire has Starkillers that are meant to slag a planet. That way you could punish one planet while leaving another in the same system alone. It's a targeted, yet all-consuming strike on an entire world, without additional collateral damage, for the Empire's version.

[Rev Solomon]

It's very possible the same weapon could actually do both. The Starkiller is a hypermatter-based weapon, like the Death Star superlaser, and hypermatter supposedly converts part of its target to antimatter, essentially turning the target into a matter/antimatter bomb. I always imagined the Starkiller effect being similar to that of the Little Doctor from Ender's Game (spoiler for a sci-fi novel that was published in 1985), which creates a cascade of molecular destruction that is self-sustaining as long as it has matter to eat. With that logic, it will eventually consume any target you throw it at, whether it's a Death Star, a planet, or an entire friggin' sun.

Heck, maybe the whole rationale behind developing it was to render superweapons like the Death Star obsolete. Hence the name Starkiller. Build a battlestation the size of a moon at the cost of an entire starfleet? We don't need a suicide mission to take it down anymore; we just need to fire a single missile.

This whole discussion has actually made me wonder about the possibility of a Manhattan Project thread exploring the development of the Starkiller. It would give us a chance to actually put this debate into the mouths of our characters.

[Charley]

That's intriguing. So basically it can do all these things up to an including quenching a star? I like that idea.

[Tear]

I think it's a good idea too.

[Alexi Hesith]

I've no problem with chaning the weapon but I think that the cold war scenario depends upon both sides having the capability to do the same terrible thing to each other because it creates a balance between them that keeps the war cold. To have one side (the Empire) in a position to instantly obliterate worlds and the other (the Alliance) in a position to transform them for the worse over an extended period would not serve to maintain balance.

[Droo]

The stalemate would still exist because both sides have the same weapon, capable of slagging planets and killing stars. It is in how they choose to use it that would set them apart.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I believe the idea was that the Starkillers were extrapolated from Cizerack tech, so a Manhattan project thread would probably be fun. :)

[Morgan Evanar]

I don't see why something that would upset a star couldn't also slag a planet. It's one of those "well, how high up did you detonate it?" scenarios. The reaction needed to cease a star could also cause a planetary conflagration if detonated within an atmosphere.

[Zem Vymes]

Great point there.

[Lady Frygt]

What if it just forced the star into dying. I believe when stars die then start producing a ton of iron atoms, if a weapon or technology could change the atomic reaction in the star so that it starts producing iron, so for a Starkiller to work, we need to start a chemical reaction that causes whatever is in stars Hydrogen and Helium I think (I'm an artist, not a chemist or physicist) to turn to Iron or perhaps a more simple element, Carbon? Honestly, I like the notion of a giant ball of Iron floating around in space where there used to be a star.

Basically we need to cause a massive chemical reaction within a star... so StarKillers are just big weaponized catalysts that cause whatever atoms are in stars to change to something inert like iron.

So I juast realized I'm talking about chemical reactions when the sun is a nuclear reaction. And to date, no one knows how to stop a nuclear reaction from happening, so like an anti-nuke weapon, which doesn't exist to my knowledge.

But of course we are writing in a science fiction background. So all the reader needs to know is that Starkillers render suns into inert balls or iron. The End, problem solved.

[Kale]

A chemical reaction is going to be far too slow to work on a stellar scale. I think we already have a working pseudo-scientific mechanism in a hypermatter reaction cascade, which keeps it consistent with the Starkiller's origins as a variant of Cizerack technology. My guess is that the reaction propagates down to the star's core and rapidly burns through its supply of fusionable hydrogen, aging it many billions of years in the space of a few hours.

If we still want the image of a quenched star, the end result may look like our sun at the very end of its life cycle: much of its mass will boil away into a planetary nebula that engulfs the system, leaving behind a slowly cooling white dwarf (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_dwarf) made of electron-degenerate matter, far too cool to sustain life on any of its planets. Much more massive stars would collapse into neutron stars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_star). Realistically this process would still take millions of years even if the hydrogen vanished instantaneously, but for our purposes let's say the output of light and heat begins to fade on impact, and the star dies over the course of a few weeks to a few days, depending on its size, wreaking havoc with planetary weather systems, but giving the population at least a chance to evacuate.

The effects of the cascade on a planetary target will be much faster. Think the destruction of Krypton in Man of Steel, but without the planet-shattering kaboom at the end. The reaction expands spherically, so it rapidly immolates the planet's surface for thousands of kilometers surrounding the impact site, while the far side of the planet suffers apocalyptic-level quakes as the reaction works its way up through the planet's core, and then the mantle explodes through every fault line in towering plumes of molten ejecta. Depending on how much energy was stored in the planet's core, it either keeps blasting eruptions like Io or cools into an inert ball of cinders over the course of the next several years. Either way, everything is gone.

[Alexi Hesith]

It doesn't make sense to me that one side can promise instant (or near instant) destruction of worlds while the other side threatens equally certain but slower destruction and a balance of power result. Whichever side opts to use the weapons in the more humane (ha!) manner will be at a disadvantage and, therefore, unable to effectively deter their opponent.

[Droo]

I wasn't under the impression that either side were going to publicly declare how they intend to use the weapons - that is, after all, a military matter - and that's what creates a Cold War environment. I understand where you're coming from, but I don't think it's an issue. It's the not knowing what exactly the enemy intends to do with their Starkiller missiles that turns the situation into an interesting stalemate.

[Kale]

Intentions are more academic than capabilities. I'm sure every Senator, joint chief, and military commander in the Alliance hopes never to use a Starkiller on a planetary target. But there's still someone on Dac with a finger on the button that will send a missile to Coruscant, Corulag, and whatever other worlds will most quickly and decisively cripple the Empire should the Imperials order a Starkiller strike of their own. I sincerely doubt the Alliance has offered any promises about their Starkiller arsenal. This is the height of the Cold War nuclear standoff, where each side believes the other is capable of anything.

For that matter, I doubt the stated objective behind the Starkiller project was ever to develop a planet/star-killing weapon. I imagine development started with a Cizerack weapons researcher presenting a theoretical paper to a closed meeting of the Alliance joint chiefs, who ordered a classified development project to see if it was feasible. Maybe the original scope was just to take out the stupidly big weapons the Empire enjoys building, like the Death Star or anything approaching an Eclipse-class Star Destroyer. When the researchers discovered there was no theoretical upper limit to the size of the cascade, the joint chiefs quietly crapped their pants and said, "Keep researching."

When the Empire made overtures on rebuilding the Death Star II, the Alliance made their move and fired a prototype missile on the remains of the station. From that moment on, the genie was out of the bottle. The Empire pursued a similar research path, possibly with help of Alliance defectors and stolen intelligence, and soon developed their own version of the weapon. With the entire galaxy under threat of mutual annihilation, an armistice was struck, resulting in the political situation we have now.

Interestingly, Rossos Atrapes (http://theholo.net/forum/showthread.php?55443-The-Empire-s-Golden-Boy&p=1025775&viewfull=1#post1025775) has already followed a similar line of thought. The Empire still holds an advantage, simply because it has more resources and more planets. If an all-out Starkiller exchange were to take place, the Alliance would run out of planets before the Empire did. The galaxy would be thrown into chaos, but something of the Empire could survive. But the cost is still great enough to serve as a deterrent where any other possibility of victory still exists.

[Alexi Hesith]

In any deterrence scenario, the defender seeks to deter the attacker from taking an action (or set of actions) by promising retaliatroy action that would render action too costly to the attacker. The defender has to do three things to make deterrence work.

1. Instill in the attacker the belief that the defender possesses the means to deliver massive retaliation.

2. Instill in the attacker the that the defender has the will to take retaliatory action.

3. Make the attacker understand what action will result in retaliation.

These three together should, if done properly, ensure that the attacker is deterred from taking the action being deterred against.

In our scenario the Alliance is the defender and the Empire is the attacker. The Alliance seeks to deter the Empire from disrupting the peace settlement. The Alliance's action in using the starkiller against a valuable target (which also brought the Empire to the negotiating table) would show the means and will to take action against the Empire. Some manner of communication between the Alliance and the Empire would be needed to ensure that the Empire knows that disruption of the settlement will result in massive retaliatory action. The definition of "disruption of the settlement" need not be very specific but it would need to be resonably clear and forceful otherwise the Empire might take action that provokes the Alliance's retaliation.