They took a trip to Pandora, genocided some Na'vi and armored with Unobtanium.


More seriously, it was plot bullshit armor, especially given that they're stated to have armored Star Destroyers with fucking Neutronium and we know that proton torpedoes can punch through them.


So yeah, basically, the answer to the Sun Crusher shouldn't have been "Oh god, it's invincible, we need to destroy the spirit of an ancient Sith to snap the pilot out of solar-scale terrorism," it should have been "Get Wedge Antillies on the horn. Send in Rogue Squadron!"


Furthermore, in an act of stupendous derpery, the Sun Crusher itself was just a ship. If you got rid of the resonance torpedoes, it would've made a fine addition to the vessel line-up of Rogue Squadron or the Jedi Academy (even nonwithstanding the plot armor.) And the resonance torpedoes are munitions; munitions that can be replicated, munitions that can be mounted on, oh, any vessel in the galaxy the size of a Y-Wing or greater, so, basically any vessel in the galaxy.

Destroying the invincible starfighter did basically nothing, really, since the resonance torpedoes were the dangerous thing the whole time, and there's no telling whether or not the plans for them slipped out. But hey, derpity derp, Star Wars novel writing.


[e] I'd also like to point out that, if they hadn't destroyed it and the torpedoes, but instead reverse engineered them, they would've kicked the Yuuzan Vong's asses left, right and center. So yeah, you tossed into a black hole a superweapon capable of winning basically any war you fight, even if you don't use it to its fullest (sun-destroying) potential and instead just use it to destroy enemy capital ships to cripple their ability to wage war on you. GG.

That's Uwe Boll quality of writing.

Well, and Kevin J. Anderson, apparently.

Neutronium is used in the construction of densiplate which Star Destroyers use for armor. That's a huge fucking leap to go from part of to made of neutronium. The fact is that we don't know how much or what purpose neutronium serves in constructing ship armor. It could be a bonding agent, catalyst, or a cheap way to add some reinforcement ala rebar in order to dissipate energy. The fact that proton torpedoes do damage Star Destroyers is more of a testament towards that definition than it being made of solid neutronium. There's plenty of collisions within the universe that would also serve to point it out.

The armor of the Sun Crusher, however, has been physically described as stacking atoms as densely as physics would permit and using two such layers which are phase shifted. The armor of the Sun Crusher is more akin to pure neutronium than than durasteel.



Good. Good. You pay due the proper respect.

Pretty much.

If you have a superweapon that takes the form of a torpedo that can be launched from a reasonably standard small torpedo launcher, that can destroy capital ships with one direct hit or make suns go supernova within an hour (so basically not so fast that the ruling elite and the few people lucky enough to have hyperspace-capable ships at their disposal can't evacuate, but far, far too fast for any sort of mass evacuation plans to take place,) do you mount it on,

A) A completely unique and unmistakable vessel the size of a heavy starfighter
B) A capital warship with an experienced, reliable commander and a handpicked crew of elite veterans.
C) Every available torpedo-bomber you have, resources depending
D) The most ubiquitous small freighter (Millennium Falcon-sized) hull in the galaxy

If you answered "C", then congratulations, you have the good sense of an admiral used to using space superiority starfighters. You know that the best way to employ this weapon system is to distribute it as much as possible so no heroic antics on the part of a small party of commandos or a Jedi or two can rob you of it.
If you answered "B", then congratulations, you have the good sense of an heroic starship commander. You're used to relying on yourself and your crew, handpicked and trustworthy. You know that the best way to employ this weapon system is to keep it on a platform fast enough to move, powerful enough to fight even without the super-weapon, and hopefully, in the company of escorts.
If you answered "D" then congratulations, you have the good sense of a Shadowrunner. You know that the best way to employ this weapon is to be as stealthy as possible, and hide your needle in a stack of needles. With a good IFF spoof and good hands at falsifying your markings and registration information, you can take your superweapon wherever you want it basically unnoticed, and by the time anyone thinks it remotely odd that you took your ship close to the star, it'll be far too late because you'll be in hyperspace and their sun will be undergoing contractions as the supernova reaction starts.

If you answered "A," then you're an idiot.

Either way, the notion of using neutronium - at all - as an armoring material is completely absurd. Nothing should be plot-immune to being destroyed by conventional means, let alone made so plot-immune whilst still being able to fly and maneuver like a starfighter.

Hell, if you have that, you don't need the fucking resonance torpedoes. You're already piloting a superweapon, one you can fly anywhere and do anything with conventional weapons you damn well feel like, with complete and utter impunity.




I wouldn't waste Master Skywalker's time with it. Well, maybe if it was being piloted by Kyp Durron, but only then because the danger isn't the Sun Crusher itself, but the risk that the pilot of the Sun Crusher is capable of reaching out with the Force and smashing their starfighters before they can get into range to engage it with torpedoes and laser cannons. Otherwise, you can't afford to fuck around with a ship capable of crushing suns, and sending in any kind of capital warship is utterly hopeless owing both to the Sun Crusher's ability to smash capital warships with one torpedo, and the fact that capital warships are notoriously bad at bringing their weapons to bear on starfighter-sized targets. So sending in the very best starfighter squadron you have is the best and most sane response.

*Cough*

Entertainingly enough, it WAS Kyp Durron who piloted the Suncrusher. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Besides, the Resonance Torpedoes could ONLY be fired from the Suncrusher Platform. Just sayin' (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Or you answer A because you use the weapon as a doomsday threat device.

Let's see. I have a small vessel which would be very difficult to detect that has an armor system that makes it impervious to any weaponry my foes can throw at it. I have a trustworthy pilot in command of it that has utter loyalty to me and should anything untold happen to me he has orders to start blowing up stars in highly populous systems.



Materials science is a pretty fascinating subject, but I'll just point out that the only material that we've discovered that can support a space elevator would be carbon nanotubes. They're extremely lightweight but also far stronger than many other materials. The whole point of materials research is to strengthen materials while reducing weight. This is the essential design principle of the armor for the Sun Crusher. It is of course, experimental and not suitable for mass manufacturing.

And without the superweapon? It makes it relatively useless. You have a pretty little starship that could ram a Star Destroyer's bridge without a scratch. Entirely useless since it can only be in one place at a time. It is only because of the superweapon that it serves a purpose.

Better idea:

Make all of your ships out of this indestructible armor.

Cost Prohibitive...
The Empire managed to scrape together enough of the armor (and the funding for said armor) to provide armor for a single ship, and no more. *shrug*

Then the threat still isn't the sun crusher, it's the fact that the pilot is a goddamn rogue Jedi, and the threat would be the same if he were flying a Z-95 Headhunter.



Any launcher you could put on the Sun Crusher, you could put on another ship. Even if no existing heavy bomber has the right form-factor to mount it, and assuming you're too much of an idiot to engineer a launcher to fit in the form factor torpedo bays of the heavy bombers you already have, you can engineer a new mass-producible heavy bomber with the right form factor. And you can definitely mount it on anything the size of the Millennium Falcon on up.

The Sun Crusher isn't some magical artifact which is the only thing capable of launching Resonance Torpedoes because essence lines mumbo jumbo. It is technology, and technology can be replicated, adapted, modified.

I can get loyal pilots anyway.

And a terror threat that you CANNOT identify is even more terrifying - especially if you can mount the darn thing on EVERYTHING.

-Hauler
-Automated launcher piggybacking on an unsuspecting freighter
-Common private fightercraft
-A bomber SQUADRON with multiple launcher and multiple attack vectors
-A FLEET

Not to mention the probably STAGGERING cost to produce ONE UNIQUE craft with impervious armor that you could have skipped and armed most of your fleet with standard weaponry and torpedo launchers.

The impervious armor is the only good thing but since it appears that either torpedo or armor has been reproduced since you can start to wonder WHY.
1- Weapon is to horrible to contemplate so the victors hide it from everyone and destroys the research.
2- The armor is to complex and/or expensive to mass produce for anything useful.

In the end Sith aren't very smart.

Yes a force user could probably have a field day against regular forces in his supership but the ship is not impervious to kinetic impacts or EMP effects or ION cannons.

Not to mention the idiotic invention of BLASTERS. Chuck 100 megaton NUKES with concussion missiles all around the ship and the shockwave and radiation will obliterate the shields and most likely vaporize the ship I mean the warheads in star wars are laughable.

And I'm not talking ONE nuke. Saturate a 100 kilometer square of space by using fighters and bombers - the dude is using a bloody DOOMSDAY weapon so overkill does not exist in that case.

Rogue Jedi cannot destroy an entire solar System, while the Suncrusher CAN. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

As for the Launcher, the Ship was designed around the Launcher. They were both Unique in the Universe. Maybe, at some later point, when they could figure out how to make it economical, yes, they could do that, but as it was, the ship and its armor and weapons were unique. You are making the assumption that they were in mass production (or getting close to such a time where it was soon to be viable), and that is a false assumption. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

A doomsday device is useless if no one knows about it. In fact, easily identified is better in this case. It's presence alone would cause mass panic on every inhabited planet in a system where it's present and known to be.

Indeed...

And you make it an obvious, easily-destroyed target, even if you put Anakin fucking Skywalker at the height of his physical and Force-using abilities at the stick.

I reject entirely the insane notion that it was made out of ridiculous indestructible armor, yet I also make allowances in the "what-if" form in the fact that the fighter itself is a superweapon.



Even if you have magic armor that gives DR 1000 against lasers, it's still going to pop if you nail the motherfucker with a proton torpedo. Even if it won't pop to a proton torpedo, you've rapidly escalating to the point where sending Luke Skywalker to disassemble it with the Force is a practical measure. And no armor is going to save you from the insides being crushed by the Force.

Also, the "and if anything should happen to me" bit works just as well with the ubiquitous vessel as with a highly unique and obvious ship.






Yes, but no matter how advanced materials science gets in the "resisting damage" measure, it's never going to outstrip the "dealing damage" abilities of weapons science.




It's one ship that can turn the tide of fleet battles just by plouwing right through enemy capital ship's important bits. It can attack and destroy governments with impunity; attack and destroy vital war resource and production operations...

Give me the Sun Crusher, without any Resonance Torpedoes, and I'll win the Rebellion early for you. You won't need to send the entire Fleet to attack the Death Stars, just me and my Sun Crusher. I'm sure that launcher can be adapted to, or replaced with, an ordinary proton torpedo launcher. Hell, I won't even need the proton torpedoes, I'll just play Blast Corps on its reactor coolant towers.

Hell, I'll take out the frigging Emperor for you. Override the hyperspace safties, come out of hyperspace in orbit of Coruscant facing the right direction, slam down through the atmosphere and start dropping proton torpedoes right on his office or somewhere that I know he's making a public appearance. Or better still, wipe out the Imperial Navy's headquarters when I know they're going to be having a big moffs-and-admirals meeting.


The Sun Crusher, as stated with its bullshittium armor, even without the resonance torpedoes, would be a far better weapon of terror than the Death Star. It needs only a crew of one, can resupply at any backwater landing pad or trading post, or just by resorting to a spot of piracy. It can strike wherever it damn well feels like, without any warning, it's the exact opposite of ponderous in that it can go anywhere easily.

The Death Star is something that an entire Rebel Alliance could rally against, a symbol of oppression that the galaxy could rally against. The Sun Crusher would be a weapon with which you could perpetrate 9/11 style mayhem and carnage - literally, if you decide to save on torpedoes and just plow through buildings and starships - anywhere in the galaxy, for as long as you felt like sustaining the engagement, and then bugger off with into hyperspace, to strike again whenever and wherever you felt like.

Actually, they can, they just need Starkiller levels of Unleashed Force to do it. Stars go supernova when they undergo core collapse because they start fusing Iron. The fusing of Iron is an energy death to a star, because the outward force from the nuclear fusion in the center falls below the level required to keep all the lighter elements out of the core fusion. They fall into the core, start fusing themselves, you get a runaway reaction of materials fusing and fusing, until the damn thing goes ka-BOOM!

Really, the Resonance Torpedo probably works by creating a massive, localized gravitational event that pulls in enough material in a short moment to put the star past that limit; which would also handily explain why it one-shots capital ships, since nothing could really withstand that kind of gravitational shear. A sufficiently powerful Dark Jedi/Sith could crush a star enough to make this happen, too.




Get that condescending smiley face out of there.

A launcher is a fucking launcher, nothing more, nothing less. It consists of a mechanism to provide initial speed to the torpedo, and a magazine to hold the torpedo's additional ammunition. They went with a vertical magazine for the Sun Crusher, but the form factor of the magazine could easily be adapted to fill the bomb bay of a TIE Bomber, to say nothing of a bay installation on even a corvette, let alone a Star Destroyer or anything upwards of that, and it won't even be all that onerous on a light freighter.

And frankly, a launcher is a simple thing. Even moreso if you make it a one-shot launcher, with the torpedo housed in the launcher ready to go. All any bomber would need is just one of the damn torpedoes anyway.

An unknown doomsday device is only useless if your intent is to intimidate with it.

If, instead, you prefer to just win your frigging war, it's the best sort of doomsday device, because you should use it as early and often as feasable before the other guys figure out what you're doing or how you're doing it.

Actually, there is evidence of what sort of blow it could take. It took a glancing blow from a death star super laser and went unscathed. A glancing blow from it would severely damage if not outright destroy most capital ships and starfighters would be evaporated by such a blow. The proton torpedo would do nothing to the Suncrusher. Would it survive a direct blow from a Death Star superlaser? That's questionable.



Star Destroyers do have auxiliary bridges. While you could take out the primary bridge by plowing into it the overall damage would be extremely limited. It's not as if the Suncrusher would fly through the bridge and out the other side and could effectively swiss cheese ships.



You really overestimate the potency of proton torpedos. IIRC the Suncrusher could load 12 of it's superweapon torpedoes. 12 proton torpedos wouldn't damage a star destroyer too badly, assuming you could even get them past its shield which would probably take at least half the allotment. Let alone cause any of the mass havoc that you've described.



That's a good idea. Let's use this expensive and hard to make munition that blows up a star so that we can blow up every system that we suspect might contain a Rebel base. That's is a ludicrously wasteful way to go about things.

That was never the point to the Death Star or any other doomsday superweapon. The entire point of them is to threaten civilian populations. It does two things. It suppresses Rebel activity because they won't know if you're going to nova a star and it encourages civilian populations to avoid helping the Rebellion or activity working against Rebel agents that they find out about. Grand Moff Tarkin (arguably the guy in charge of all superweapon development) said explicitly of the Death Star "Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battlestation."

I can write literally any drek on paper, that doesn't make it plausable. I say again, I outright reject the notion that it could possibly do that. But, for the sake of argument, I argue that if it has armor made of invincibility, it itself constitutes a superweapon.




Sure it could. It might have to back up a few times, but it could. It could also pop the shield generators and slam into the engines or the reactor bay. Slam through the reactor housing, the reaction dissipates, the Star Destroyer is dead in space. Or it could just smash into the hull and plow over the turbolaser batteries.

If it has armor made of invincibility, then it must have engines made of insanity to fly like a starfighter. Get invincible insanity up to speed, and it's basically a neutronium cannonball.





Twelve proton torpedoes in the right spots will utterly destroy a Star Destroyer. And you need to remember that proton torpedoes are nukes. Remember the mega-fuckuppage they did on the Executor's shield domes? Remember the hatchet job they did on the Death Star's reactor core?

Don't underestimate the power of proton torpedoes.





Yep! So that's exactly what you don't do. You use this invincible insanityship to cruise around using more common munitions and its laser cannons and its ability to fucking cannonball through a Star Destroyer to fuck up things you know or suspect to be major Rebel points of power.




How'd that work out for you, Tark?

I'd rather just win my war, thank you very much.

No, it isn't. A Launcher is generally desinged for the ordinance that it uses. Period. I cannot take a SMAW round and launch it out of a M72-LAAW Tube, nor vice versa. Your assumptions are wrong in this regard.

And that is your error. In the Star Wars Canon, it works the way it works, regardless of whether or not you approve. It works that way because it works that way. *sheesh*

If you had any form of reading comprehension in you, TJ, you would have understand that I did not say "You can make the Resonance Torpedo launch from any existing launcher," it was "you can make a launcher for Resonance torpedoes that fits into the available ordnance spaces on most existing platforms."

The launcher itself is nothing special. It consists of an ordnance magazine to store spare torpedoes and a device to accelerate the projectile. Nothing what-so-ever requires it to be steeply vertical. You could easily engineer a similar device to fit, as I suggested, a TIE Bomber's bomb bay.




Then the people who designed it were absolute and utter morons, because they made the single greatest breakthrough in materials science imaginable - creating a material which is somehow immune to anything short of a direct hit from a planet-smasher superlaser, which is completely impossible but there you have it - and the very best thing they could think of to do with it is use it as part of the bullshit justification for why one motherfucking starfighter was anything approaching a threat to the galaxy at large.

Again, Uwe Boll quality writing, here.

Wow... Insult much? The Launcher was a Unique Device on a Unique Platform. It was never designed to fit any other design space. What part of Unique did you not get?

And no, as far as the Armor was concerned, they made the single greatest breakthrough in materials science; unfortunately, it was a breakthrough that they could not duplicate. Happens sometimes. In this case because the Designer was Killed and the Research was destroyed (IIRC), with the Prototype gone missing and ultimately fed to a Black Hole.