I want to destroy a star destroyer

[Tiberius Anar]

During the several years of my absence, I had ticking in the back of my brain a story I wanted to tell. Unusually for me it was in a military setting. I wrote bits and pieces for it as and when I had the writing itch and I find myself, now, with a fair few posts just sitting there. I keep thinking it would be fun to post hereabouts but I have one major obstacle to overcome. For the story's premise I need to destroy a star destroyer, which is something beyond my technical knowledge. So here I am asking for your help.

For what I would like to write the ship would need to be damaged in combat. It would need to be damaged crtically and noticeably in a fairly short period of time but in such a way that the Captain would have enough time to realise what was happening so that a largely successful evacuation could be ordered. The ship would have to be destroyed along with a chunk of the crew.

(To use an analogy from "the other place" its a warp core breach in Star Trek.)

Now how might that happen to a star destroyer?

[Rolth Wygraant]

It happens quite similarly to your star trek analogy. The powerhouse that drives a star destroyer is a massive matter annihilator, part of which is displayed prominently along the aft quarter of the ventral hull. The annihilator is a reactor that also derives energy from the mutual destruction of measured introduction of matter streams into antimatter streams in a gravitationally-controlled maelstrom. Were any number of factors impeded in it's operation, it could result in a dynamic release of antimatter reserve into conventional matter that makes up the ship. The energy released by the entire reaction taking place at once would cause an explosion that would easily consume even a star destroyer.

[Reshmar]

The thing is, How did the star destroyer get damaged to the point the core is about to go.? A star destroyer is not an easy kill for anything. disabling is one thing but taking it down to BOOM, is another. It would take concentrated fire from something large enough to do the job, which only the alliance has, or a group of vessels that somehow got the jump on the ship. Concentrated torpedo barrage would be one way but the mass amount of bombers needed would be on a scale only a massive planetary defense force would be able to muster. There is just no singular group outside the Alliance or the Chiss in our time line capable of taking out a star destroyer. Capturing one is possible but destroying one is a chore. If said ship were to be sabotaged then it would be possible. Te best options would be internal sabotage or a hyperspace accident. The ship coming out of hyperspace in the wrong place and taking damage that way could work. A malfunction in the ships motivators or in its computer could have made it jump off course or fall out of hyperspace at the wrong time. say said destroyer is cruising along minding its own business and BAM! it falls out of hyperspace and slams into an asteroid field. The ship would not have time for the shields to come up before it took massive damage from asteroids. As for sabotage someone could lets say disable one or more of the cooling feeds into the reactor, or plant a small charge on the core itself causing a leak first then as the pressure inside the Ion chamber destabilizes it would cause said bom. Oh yeah also Star Destroyers do not use matter demolishing reactors. They have hyperspace field generators, which is basically a small sun as a core. They take energy given off by stars and such and ionizes it into a singularity. Anything that impeeds the singularity from being stable will make it go boom but there would be levels upon levels of protection for such a thing. One would need to plant a charge inside the core chamber room iteself. Also the engine room could be half a ship away from the core chamber. the engine room is just a control room. with a core the size of a star destroyer you would be at least 300 meters away from the core room. Another idea is get a large enough explosive inside the ship. Think Nuclear, and big. something like 200 gigtons of tnt big. there are ores and other things out there that have this power. some time goggling can get you to something that will work. My suggestion would be a baradium torpedo. Lets say you get maybe 12 off some disenfranchised excommunicated Chiss, cough, who want nothing more than to destabilize the empire. get those onboard the destroyer and rig them to explode. you talking about a hole the size of a frigate no where they were setting. think thermal detonator x 10000.

[Stela'shlit'nuruodo]

Feel free to use Lash as an NPC if you like or just in reference. if you do decide to go with the baradium idea.

[Tiberius Anar]

Well, I was thinking of telling the story of the destruction in flashback and/character narration so that should overcome the obstacle of only the Alliance having the means to deal enough damage. In this case, of course, it would be the REBEL Alliance...

Is it conceivable that a rebel force with lesser firepower could get lucky in tackling a star destroyer? Maybe hit the exact same faulty plating a few times and trigger the failure of some power supply or other system?

[Reshmar]

Yeah the were outmatched in almost every battle the fought. combined fighter and bomber attacks will do it. any ships would just be for support before the mon cal ships joined. Even in the early days they were still outmatched with cal cruisers. If it is an Imp 1 then you have alot better chance of taking it out with fighters. The deuces were just beasts. A Dauntless cruiser was the only thing that really could go toe to toe with them. Cal cruisers could do the job but they had way too little firepower and had to rely their shielding to keep them fighting longer and on fighters to do most of the work. if you had something smaller like gunships or corvettes to help with clearing out ties, the fighters and bombers can work a destroyer down pretty fast. Torpedoes are really the best way to take one down. Also Tie pilots sucked in general because they were spread out over millions of planets so having a good squadron of ties was rare. The rebel pilots were just better. Again rebels onboard the ship could sabotage many key systems. targeting, shields, command and control. Blinding the sensors of an imp would leave gunners to manually target which is not as easy as one would think. Taking out the hyperdrive, Targeting, Shields would make a destroyer more or less a big target. Use neb B frigates and corvettes. the cross sections are barley targetable until they get close if the targeting systems are down. thing like dreadnaught heavy cruiser and other larger ships did not far as well since they are just better targets. the chore is explaining how rebel agents got aboard the destroyer.

[Tiberius Anar]

My thinking is along the lines that, while sabotage will be suspected, the truth is that the ship got destroyed by an unexpected (and for the Rebels lucky) coincidence of factors. What I am interested in exploring is the aftermath of the ship's loss and how the incident is explained by the Imperial authorities.

Let's say it is an Imp 1 and it is operating with support vessels and another star destroyer to pacify a rebellious world. Assumption is that any armed resistence will be swept aside but the rebels get in a few very lucky shots. The damage from these lucky shots leads to a series of control and component failures that result in a runaway reaction in the power core. The ship is abandoned and explodes. In the confusion the surviving Imperials withdraw. If I was to write something along these lines would it be laughable or would it be sufficiently plausible to provide a premise for a story exploring how the Empire (military and civilian) deals with a fairly major setback during the civil war?

[Reshmar]

Ok, this will work. Rebels gain control of a planetary hyper velocity cannon turret on the planet. One shot from one of these could do the trick. think giant rail gun. the sheer speed and it being a solid projectile would make the shields of the destroyer useless. Hitting a destroyer in just the right spot or in this case the lucky spot would cause a chain reaction that could blow it up. But also think about how it would happen it would not be a massive explosion. more like a not so massive but still massive explosion that rips the ship in half. the two or three large parts would still offer a short amount of time for people to escape even after the explosion if they survived the blast concussion.

[Tiberius Anar]

That sounds very impressive not to mention highly effective but it would not provide quite what I need for this story.

What I need is a cause of destruction that is ambiguous or, at the very least, would be to people looking back at the incident. Was it x or y? Was it caused by sheer bad luck or was it bad maintenance? Sabotage? Poor handling of the ship?

The ship getting cracked open like a nut is about as unambiguous as I can imagine. The investigation would be pretty short. "Did the Rebels have one of these?" "Yep." "That'll have done it then."

To go back a bit, in my previous post I outlined a scenario in which the Rebels got in some lucky shots and you, Reshmar, have previously suggested that it would take massive numbers of fighters/bombers to do enough damage. Is it entirely impossible/laughable/absurd to have a couple of waves of fighters/bombers make what they expect to be a near suicidal run out of desperation on a part of an IMP1 only to get lucky and kill it? Maybe a few hits that seem to have no effect and then...boom!

[Baastian Cain]

This reminds me of the demise of the Executor, where a measly A-Wing slipped through a gap in the deflectors, careened through the bridge, and ultimately sent the whole ship nosediving into the Death Star - which, honestly, I've always thought was pretty unbelievable. But what if in the attack, a damaged fighter/bomber goes off-course and slams into the reactor bulge, discharging its entire payload at once? I'm sure the bulge is heavily shielded to prevent such an attack from one-shotting the destroyer. But if we're talking an Apollo-13, space shuttle Challenger sort of cascade failure of sheer bad luck, maybe the structures inside the bulge have developed certain critical faults over many years of service. Maybe the blast is just enough to crack a few crucial relays, and the redundant backups have been compromised by a combination of age and poor upkeep. Alarms fail to light up, failsafes fail to kick in. Someone in engineering might report a drop in power, but in his eagerness to wipe out the Rebel scum, the captain simply orders more fuel to compensate. The worst may not even happen until they attempt to engage their hyperdrive to pursue the fleeing Rebels, whereupon all indicators go red, a runaway reaction begins that the crew can't contain, and the whole ship goes supernova.

Considering the sheer number of capital ships the Empire fields, a one-in-a-million chance is actually not unlikely to happen somewhere. If we're talking a freak accident/convergence of unlikely failures, just about anything can happen.

[Tiberius Anar]

This reminds me of the demise of the Executor, where a measly A-Wing slipped through a gap in the deflectors, careened through the bridge, and ultimately sent the whole ship nosediving into the Death Star - which, honestly, I've always thought was pretty unbelievable.

I agree with that.


Considering the sheer number of capital ships the Empire fields, a one-in-a-million chance is actually not unlikely to happen somewhere. If we're talking a freak accident/convergence of unlikely failures, just about anything can happen.

Well that's encouraging.

[Reshmar]

The whole executor vs the a-wing thing was a terrible concept. Losing the command tower would have little effect on the guidance of a ship. Any capital ship will have a back-up command room. encase the command deck is destroyed. The SSD slamming into the death star was more to show the sheer size of the deathstar. as the whole scene in empire strikes back where the Executor shadowed the star destroyers was to show its size and concept. im reality destroying an SSD is more or less impossible without a massive fighter presence. even then they never travel alone. Look at the EU, most were captured because well they could not destroy them. they few that were destroyed took a fleet with them when they feel. Thats why we do not use them in stories. There is no good way to write them because they are so powerful. In our timeline, which skews from the canon at Endor, there are at least 22 super star destroyers of varying class out there. Another 8 to 12 Mandators most at Kuat,Fondor,and Bilbringi, but still in the service of the empire. OMG remember Erebus........?

so that was off topic.. anyway back on topic, so it was printed online somewhere the empire fielded over 28,000 star destroyers. Each having at least 3 smaller ships as escorts sometimes 12 or more. The power of the empire is maddening. I never knew why the empire just did not slam the rebels with its full fist. SO yes in the grand numbers game that is the Empire a freak accident probably happens once a month or so.

[Tiberius Anar]

The power of the empire is maddening. I never knew why the empire just did not slam the rebels with its full fist.

The Empire has massive resources but the Galaxy is huge and the rebel movement was dispersed. Even 28,000 star destroyers plus escorts could not cover everything and all the troops could not search every corner of every world. Brining the rebels to a pitched battle would also be tricky I would imagine. If I was a rebel commander, I would upsticks whenever I had the chance until I had enough forces to actually stand up to an attacker. Of course, by the time the rebels were in a position to do that, the Empire could not risk shifting forces away from one place to another for fear of leaving holdings exposed.

QUOTE=Reshmar;1035701]SO yes in the grand numbers game that is the Empire a freak accident probably happens once a month or so.[/QUOTE]

This idea of the law of big numbers meaning that the unlikely can occur more often is interesting and something I can work with.