Steve Jackson Games Forums - Death Star Spaceship

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Re: Death Star Spaceship

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl (Post 2297642)

Even the Cosmic Power lens is insufficient. A 10^33 J surge would be required (given the fact that a significant amount of energy will be wasted), and the waste heat alone would vaporize the station. You would need something on the order of 6×10^19 grams of matter and antimatter (30 trillion metric tons of each). It would actually make more sense to drop the antimatter on the planet and not even worry about a laser, as it would be less dangerous to the station.

I would assume the DS turbolaser actually somehow converted a large portion of Alderaan's core into antimatter via [magic physics].

Re: Death Star Spaceship

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Originally Posted by Hide (Post 2297629)

So, from what you say. Are you implying that the energy sources in the book cannot match the DS power as seen in the movies?

Neither the weapons nor the power plants can, at least not at the size of the Death Star. As I noted, using Cosmic Power, a 10-system (50% of the spacecraft's mass) Spinal Laser requires a space station that's a bit larger than Luna (Earth's moon). Such a weapon requires 10 Cosmic Power Points, which can be provided by 2 Cosmic Total Conversion systems (which seem appropriate for Star Wars' hypermatter reactors). So long as the Death Star's various turbolasers and force shield (if it even has one; I don't recall it being mentioned for DS1, and DS2 used a shield located on Endor) don't require Cosmic Power, that should be enough (the stardrive and possibly thrusters might require Cosmic Power, but those aren't used at the same time as the superlaser so we're fine there). That leaves 8 systems for the stardrive, thrusters, armor, defenses, hangar, and living areas.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cptbutton (Post 2297649)

I would assume the DS turbolaser actually somehow converted a large portion of Alderaan's core into antimatter via [magic physics].

Yeah, that's the interpretation I often go with.

Re: Death Star Spaceship

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Originally Posted by Varyon (Post 2297677)

d force shield (if it even has one; I don't recall it being mentioned for DS1, and DS2 used a shield located on Endor)

Yes, it had one. It was just too porous to keep out starfighters. It would ahve ben invulnerable to capital ships.

Force screens in SW are oddly limited. The screen at Hoth was flat and 2 dimensional. There were some original graphics in A New Hope (back in '77 when it was just "Star Wars") that showed the Millenium Flacons screens as being 2 flat plates above and below the ship. It made a little more sense out of "angling the deflectors" and it may ahve msolty meant tilting the ship.

On the other hand, screens seem to be pretty powerful. Vader's whole division of Star Destroyers were apparently inadequate to knocking down the Rebel screen at Hoth. Then in the third movie Admiral Ackbar concentrated all of the Rebel fleet's fire on one Super Star Destroyer and got a mobility kill rather than space dust.

Re: Death Star Spaceship

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl (Post 2297557)

I generally use a volumetric analysis, with the density of liquid hydrogen as the baseline, for massive installations).

Liquid Hydrogen, with a density of about 0.07 t/m^3, makes for very light structures that are mostly empty space. It might be appropriate for a universe where spaceships are built like jet liners or modern space vessels.

I think a better rule of thumb for one like Star Wars where the interiors of spaceships look like water vessels is the old rule of thumb of 100 cubic feet per ton, which is about 0.35 t/m^3, depending on the ton you use.

If the Death Star was 100 miles in diameter, it would have a volume of 7.7 x 10^16 cubic feet, and thus mass about 7.7 x 10^14 tons.

Re: Death Star Spaceship

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Originally Posted by FeiLin (Post 2297507)

I struggled a bit with guns, since you could only get 30 per tertiary battery, but I'd say the DS probably has them in the thousands at least. It _would've_ worked if you could simply say a small system be "recursively small", so you could get the tertiary batteries down to SM10-15 (there'd definitely be enough then... but I didn't find that possible).

I don't see a problem with using recursive small systems for such big designs as long as you don't go overboard. The same goes for simply extending the weapon system types, so that you can have 100 of the next smaller size gun, 300 of the one smaller than that and so on down.

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There's a small fusion torch reaction engine (I think, but I'm a bit at a loss with all the techno-babble for the engines, and I haven't looked more into the SW lore, so maybe there's better suited ones). Also, I slapped on a stardrive-1.

Use reactionless thrusters.

The Death Star also had a defensive screen. Because it was so big, the rebel's fighters flew through it quite a way out from the station itself, so I assume it was intended to stop attacks from large ships.

Re: Death Star Spaceship

The Death Star main weapons could probably be 'realistically' represented as a combination weapon that used the laser to drill a hole to the core of the planet and a mass driver to deliver 30 trillion metric tons of antimatter to the core of the planet. The 'low' setting, which is capable of annihilating capital ships, is just the laser while the 'high' setting, which is capable of annihilating worlds, is the laser plus mass driver antimatter delivery system. Of course, nothing is realistic about Star Wars, so take it with a grain of salt.