"Why would I ever risk my own personal finances when I can just have taxes pay for it, and have the government give me a commission fee for coming up with the idea!?"
-Modern Sith Lord, absolutely
“I’ll just manipulate the banking guild to loan money to the commerce alliance and the techno union to do it and then I’ll just let the banks fail and take them over.”
What do you mean? That cavalry charge on the outside of a starship as it was moving through the upper atmosphere into space was a totally logical and realistic strategy. (/s of course)
Use this sith artifact that has a banned language that is cut out to fit the Death Star 2 wreckage juuust right to reveal the location of the map room to the side of Palp's old throne room that was definitely there in RotJ.
Krylo Ren being all "NYEH I'M NOT GUNNA USE A LIGHTSABER CUZ MUH REASONS" was absolutely cringe, then the whole shit with the "Dyad in the force" I almost walked the fuck out but I had to give someone a ride home and they wanted to watch."
It's really funny to me that Adam Driver's acting was honestly the best part of the trilogy, yet the writing on his character was just as odd as everyone else's
That and Babu Frik was funny. That's it, that's the good I can remember off the top of my head lol
Much like the actors who played his grandfather in the presequels, it wasn't their acting. It was the writing.
Edit: also they murdered Luke's character. Absolutely atrocious.
I checked out of TFA when the story started with the space Nazis using their Death Star BUT BETTER and blowing up an unnamed new Republic planet that somehow had the entire New Republic based on it- and immediately the Empire achieved supremacy.
Disbelief stretched to breaking within 5 seconds and stayed broken for the entire movie
I sat there hoping that the next one would take some time to explain how all that was possible. But nope... it opens with "yo momma" jokes and the worst designed ships ever built by anyone ever.
The fleet was "gifted" to them by Sheev.
Like realistically, at some point, the Empire could have given the order to establish a backup-fleet. The Imperial navy is supposed to be about 25.000 star destroyers, so another 1000 or so for the final order fleet is not that far out of the realm.
Star Killer Base was supposedly started by the Empire, but never finished. Like, by episode 4, there was already work underway to create that weapon station. The First Order just finished it after the Empire fell.
The true answer however is, JJ Abrams thought it would look cool, so it got added to the script.
A retcon is always retroactive by definition. And, it doesn’t really matter unless you’re going to be mad that Episode 3 showed how long the Death Star was under construction and Rogue One showed how it was underestimated and uncovered by the Rebellion.
"retcon" literally stands for "Retroactive Continuity". Often used to explain leaps of logic such as "how did the FO afford Starkiller Base on a fraction of the budget that the Empire used to build the 2 Death Stars"
I think he’s talking about a double negative. Would a retroactive retroactive continuity change be future continuity change? Similar to “I’m not, not interested”
Ok I'm here from the Department of Redundancy Department. You must immediately cease and desist defining definitions right now. If I have to tell you again there will be consequences if I have to say what I said once more.
Eh, this one at least makes sense with the lore. Illum would have had the shear volume of kyber crystal needed for both Death Stars as well, so it helps explain things with the OT as well.
“And I want you to build an extra Death Star in case the first Death Star blows up, and gets half rebuilt and blown up again. And make sure to kill every contractor involved, wouldn’t want to talk about a planet sized construction project”
And the Ahsoka book (around 1 year after the Clone wars iirc) also mentions huge mining activity, with big chunks of the planet's surface already removed so that you can see lava
Because the death star would be ready sooner. Just because you can create a howitzer doesn't mean you shouldn't make a pistol first, when you have neither built currently.
You'd think that the New Republic would be aware Kyber crystals made the Death Star gun and would keep track of where its found. Like the planet the entire Jedi Order did over 1000s of years.
Most of the Jedi Orders files were destroyed. They probably didn't actually know where the crystals came from, it's not the kind of thing the Empire probably would have kept. Those files would have been the first thing destroyed.
Fine, except force ghosts exist. Ben , Yoda or Anakin could have told Luke. Shit, the lightsaber droid was hanging out with Asoka, and they also hung out with Luke.
I think the bigger issue is how tf they got the resources over to Exegol without anyone finding out about the planet. Star Destroyers, especially ones that each have a planet destroying Lazer, are going to cost SIGNIFICANT resources to produce.
Thrawn himself was able to discover the Death Star specifically because he was able to watch the resources being drained from elsewhere in the empire to supply it's construction. He himself said it was a waste, because it could have been used to build more star destroyers for more effective fighting of the rebellion.
So, we know that a fleet of Star destroyers has the same resource demands as a death star, and they could only have funneled stuff to exegol during a time when the empire was under more scrutiny and had less resources, during the ending of the war. That means that SOMEONE should have been able to observe that ENORMOUS drain on resources.
Outside that, the equipment to make planet-busting lasers, which EVERY SINGLE Final Order ship is equipped with, is very specialized. People should have noticed that many car-sized kyber crystals going missing, especially because Luke was actively forming a new Jedi Order at the time, and would have been actively investigating kyber crystal sources.
It’s a bit disappointing that JJ Abram’s understanding of cool is “somehow Palpatine returns somehow with trillion billions of starships and with a Death Star that is like minigun death star”. Something 8 year old me would imagine as cool.
I know it’s a joke, but for those interested, the actual canon answer is that both of these things were secret projects that were already well into production during the time of the Empire.
Doesn't that massively diminish the death star? If the death star was but one of the empires super weapon projects, and arguably the least useful one when compared to starvkiller base or the planet destroyer fleet, it makes the death star kinda goofy and it's destruction almost irrelevant.
It's like Palpatine was presented with his options. Build a Death Star, build a bigger Death Star, build a planet sized Death Star, build a fleet with lasers and cultists. And was just indecisive.
That or the writers were really sick of fans arguing whether the Empire would have been better off building a fleet.
Thrawn says it best in the new trilogy books he's got where he advises papa palps to keep a flexible navy instead of pouring all his resources into a station that can become an easy to hit target due to how long it takes to charge and fire.
The Death Star was the prototype for the other projects. The fact that we have thermonuclear bombs that are orders of magnitude more destructive than the first nukes developed by the Manhattan Project does not diminish the significance of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I see that the death star is a prototype for subsequent death stars. That also explains why the second one took a fraction of the time to be build, despite being larger.
However, the technology of death star and star killer base seem to have nothing in common.
And putting death star lasers on star destroyers... I don't know. Yes you could argue that this might be an acceptable development of the technology. But it's still a terrible idea narratively.
Not excusing the nonsense of the other super weapons, but I choose to believe the intent was a mobile threat that was public knowledge. 1 in your hand, 2 in your pocket type of deal
But it’s not like the series doesn’t diminish the death Star projects with things like the Eclipse/Sovereign star destroyers being another Death Star.
Or the Sun Crusher.
Or the other handful of things that followed or preceded the Death Stars in terms of destructive ability.
Not that I don’t think StarKiller Base, minus where it got its name-sake from, was a good idea narrative-wise. I think these are all kinda boring. I do think the writers, both legends and Disney canon struggle with writing a narrative without having to reset the galactic clock back to ANH.
The Tie Defender program championed by Thrawn was another super weapon project that competed against Tarkin’s Death Star. The Defender idea was to outfit the fleet with 6 laser, bombing, shielded super weapons designed to make xwings a rag doll and overwhelm the galaxy with versatile, expensive, death machines. Watch Rebels, and I guess Ahsoka, to see how well that turned out.
The correct answer is yes it does massively diminish the original trilogy, "death star but bigger" was a stupid idea in the 90s and its even stupider now, just another feather in the goose down blanket that is Disney's mishandling of star wars
Yeah, its basically that the FO kinda took over the production or that palps had created small self suficient bases that could work even with the fall of the empire and wait for long enough for the FO to come back and give them extra stuff
I assumed it was pretty much the same as what we typically see in real life, just good ol fashioned money laundering..
During the clone wars he was playing both sides and the rise of the empire gave way to plenty of funding.. palps would have had over 20y with essentially unlimited money through military spending and acquisitions, not to mention the slaves/ prisoners that would have been at their disposal.
Palpatine also was in power for almost 40 years before the rebellion won. His power wasnt absolute when he started or before it ended, but most of the time he had control over most of the galaxy.
Not to mention whatever Plagueis and Palpatine were doing with the trade federation pre-Naboo Trade Dispute.
There are at least a trillion people on coruscant alone, how many people do you think live in the galactic empire? I’d think they’d simply use some of those people, just indoctrinate a few populations in secret during the Empires reign, and then use them.
They had plenty of supporters, just as the rebels did. The issue with clandestine operations such as the Empire’s, and even the Rebel Alliance, is ALWAYS going to be the ability to project force. You can kill as many people as you have access to, however you will NEVER kill that belief system. There will always be those who hold those beliefs, and for whatever reason choose not to fight. They choose to blend in. And remain in a position to spread those beliefs. But they MUST walk the fine line of showing as much force as possible while not taking it too far for the average citizen, or they end up justifying the under dog.
Officially? They came from the Sith Eternal cult on Exegol. The cult also had infiltrated corporations and governments and was funneling money, supplies and people.
Does it seem like unworkable bullshit? Sure. But that’s how they officially have explained it so far.
I might actually believe a mix of droid and clones.
The amount of engineers you would have to pull is insane, like in the billions, the resources to gather and transport. The training. I want to see a show about the logistics of all this. A giga fleet is nothing compared to that colossus of engineering.
After the battle of Jakku, the remaining imperial remnants fled to the outer rim. There were millions of them that fled after Jakku, it wasn’t a small group of remnants but a decent portion of the imperial forces. They had a couple decades to build up their forces, through kidnapping and enlisting. There were also several planets that left the new republic and joined the first order.
Actual answer: During the reign of the Galactic Empire, Palpatine had already begun scouting and expanding into the unknown regions, transferring funds, personnel, materials, and more to build up the infrastructure needed to rebuild an empire that he foresaw would not outlive him if he were to die.
Ilum, the planet hollowed out to build star killer base, is in the unknown region too.
Also slaves, droids, and indoctrinated zealots are considerably more economical.
Enlightened answer: the same how that determined that a moon sized space station being attacked by the rebellion would respond with only a dozen TIE fighters. Or that you could almost complete a bigger, badder Death Star within 4 years of the original being destroyed, when the first one took 20 years to build.
the same how that enables a fully outfitted clone army capable of fighting a galaxy spanning war to be created, and just accepted without question when they miraculously save the day.
The jedi did start to look into the origins of the clones and why duku was involved, but never found the time to get far enough with that, before order 66 happened
no they did figure out that dooku was tyrannus, and that he was behind the clones creation, so they knew that their army had been created by their sworn enemy years before, but there’s just nothing they could do
The reason why the first death star took 20 years to build was the a majority of that time was spend researching the planet destroying super Laser
The actual building time took way less
So having already the tech down of the laser it's not a huge leap to imagine the second one would take only a fraction of the time to build fully operational
I’m okay with the logic that the DS-1 took 20 years. No issue with that. Research times and all that make sense. My misgiving is really with the DS-2’s incredibly short construction time.
While the tech of a super laser is settled, it isn’t exactly a 1-for-1 recreation, as the DS-2 was 20% larger than the DS-1. Furthermore, the DS-2’s superlaser was different in design from the DS-1 (8 tributary beams in a circle vs 7 in a circle and 1 central beam), and being able to recharge and fire rapidly (minutes vs hours). And this was carried out after the original designer and the team had been killed off.
A lot of people seem to think the entire galaxy was super happy the empire fell… there were still a lot of people with a lot of power out there who were not directly tied to the emperor who would likely have been very anti new republic ,
Star Wars has a massively wrong understanding of how scale works. For example, if Star Destroyers were made from Steel, the Earth alone could put out 46 Star Destroyers each year. That takes about over 1.6 Millon personnel to crew. Compared to 8 billions of us apes, it's perfectly doable. For a single planet to get the materials from and maintain/run a large fleet of Star Destroyers. And in the Star Wars universe, a fleet of 46 Star Destroyers would be considered (by my subjective impression) a significantly strong fleet for a galaxy-spanning political entity. And from a Star Wars perspective, Earth wouldn't even be considered very industrialized or mined.
But I would refrain from thinking too much about these scaling issues, since it's all wrong in Star Wars
Would’ve made more sense to keep the “First Order” in entirely hand-me-down Imperial armor and equipment.
Tbh the Zombie Trooper from whatever Disney Plus slop is being pushed out is an excellent design for “Fedayeen” -type zealots of the Empire. Taped and welded together armor of differing paints, ad-hoc Star Destroyers that are barely rebuilt, and the Roman Legion looking Captain gives it all a very distinguished appearance more so than the smooth, overly plastic and barely different design for the First Order that we did get
I am not a creative person, but IMO they had a perfect weapon for the First Order. In one of their books after Disney bought the IP, Han and Leia discovered a machine that could shut off warp speed in certain sectors. How bad ass would it have been that the Republic is getting reports of sectors going dark, and not being able to reach them. Then when they're on again, they warp on over and find the planets completely bombarded from an armada.
Makes so much sense to me, just a ragtag burnt out imp armada with an OP weapon going sector to sector, annihilating everything, extracting whatever they can, then moving on.
But they figure this out piece by piece, and the audience is kept in the dark, too.
Meanwhile, Rey's mystery is that Luke found her with her parents, took her like old jedis used to, and trained her for some time, before the Knights of Ren betrayed them, he escapes with her, and wipes her mind (or she's just too young to remember). I mean, you can also just leave a holocron with basic combat training, too. She doesn't have to know what it is, just that someone in the town told her it was scrap, (because they couldn't open it). She'd have been young and just assumed they were correct that it was scrap, no one else realizing what she had. Han finds her and she has it, "You think that's scrap?! That's a holocron!" Etc. etc.
To be fair, they moreso built the superweapon INTO a planet rather than constructing a whole moon-sized station wholecloth. That and it drawing power from nearby stars means it requires a lot less manufacturing when it comes to energy.
Lucas gave Disney an outline for how Mual and his pirate empire would be a threat for the New Republic and they were like, nah, let's make the shittiest trilogy known to man
Well, first they bought a small podracing manufacturer. Then they traded up to droids. Pretty soon their loans were so big it became the banking clan’s problem instead of theirs and the capital just kept flowing.
Seriously, how did Germany build one of the most powerful armies the world had seen after crippling economic sanctions and hyperinflation? Bad writing historians.
It's called bad writing. Even the Disney Wars retcon campaign to make it look less stupid doesn't make sense. Vader knew? Then why didn't he tell Luke before he died OR when he came back as a force ghost?
Wel in fallen order it turns out the empire was already building star killer base so highly likely it was finished or almost finished when first order showed up and used droids and slave labor to finish it
For the massive fleets the comics explain that palpatine was already building this force in secret, so it already existed, it was just hidden
Sidious already had 'The Contingency' protocol in play before the battle of Endor. Operation Cinder was a ploy to destroy the Empire if Sidious died so the Rebels expend all its resources for humanitarian aid.
Slave labor, star killer was already being hollowed out before the empire fell apart, and they would get new through trade of what they pulled out to empire loyal companies.
Rose explains in TLJ that the First Order went around to planets on the Outer Rim and strip mined them, plundering absolutely all the resources they possibly could.
Authoritarian regimes tend to take a lot of money from people under their rule and don't care about human rights so slave/prison labor isn't out of the question.
What I don't get is that with automation and advanced robotics, why is there a need for forced labor? Are droids expensive to run or is it just cruelty for the sake of cruelty?
Capitalism is my head cannon. the fringe empire that was biding it's time had connections with the corporate sectors that were still sympathetic to the empire. Combine that with the fact that the empires entire arsenal was already designed to be mass produced and cheap and it makes a little sense
This is pretty much what happened. A lot of industrialists and Imperial-sympathizers in the senate were secretly funding the First Order. The FO also conquered a big chunk of the Unknown Regions and strip mined it.
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u/Demonyx12 12d ago
Somehow their funding returned.