Why Blowing Up Planets is Pointless
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- Опубліковано 10 січ 2020
- Spacedock breaks down some flaws with planet killing death rays.
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Sounds like something that someone that can’t blow up planets would say.
Let's be honest, if we can blow up a planet at our command we all would.
@@izrael820 true.
@@izrael820 wtf I wouldn’t what’s wrong with you people?
@@justaguy1229 you would do it, c'mon
@@justaguy1229 yeah no, there could be some unintended consequences. Like if a large chunk of the planet broke off and started traveling as an asteroid it could even threaten earth.
1 character death is a tragedy, a planet death is a statistic.
stalin be lke
Are you suggesting that I can stop resisting the urge to head-butt the Exterminatus button before me?
@Esben M and a whole planet system's destruction is a joke (see Force Awakened)
Ah yes Joseph stalin
Ok stalin
Blowing up populated planets is not pointless in Stellaris but in fact beneficial to reduce late game lag...which is what the Empire in Star Wars was attempting to achieve.
As someone in the empire this is true
Vader "My lord, why are we blowing up Alderaan?"
Palpatine: "My PC is overheating."
Iirc the reason why the scientists in Legacy Star Wars created the Death Star laser was for fracturing large asteroids and planetoids for mining on a massive scale. Course the Emperor had other plans... but I don't see why it still can't be used for similar reasons. Granted the energy expenditure may be too much, let alone building the infrastructure to begin with.
The point of the first Death Star was unironically "It's not about profit, it's about sending a message."
True, but the message backfired pretty spectacularly on the Empire
@William Sheridan Also, while it did take thousands of years, Taris was able to recover to *some* extent.
Alderaan was destroyed forever.
Seems to be a pretty significant difference.
As if building and blowing up two deathstars in the OT wasnt dumb enough already.
@@janbenf Yeah, terrible strategy was a good part of that too. They attacked Alderaan, intending to send a message, but Alderaan was publicly seen as a scenic art center for the Galaxy. Therefore, instead of seeming to get rid of an issue, the people saw the Empire taking away their dream vacation spot for no reason.
In contrast, Starkiller base got rid of an already seen as bad, and worthless New Republic centers of power, so no one cared at all that they got blown up except for the handful of people who cheered it on. They were scared, but in some cases also happy about what the First Order was doing.
“I’m completely fed up with super weapons as a plot device”
Welcome to post- WW2
The Prequels should have been a political intrigue like GoT or Dune 2000,
The OT should stay the same and nothing should change.
The Sequel should have been more of a 007 Space Cold War spy plot.
Maldus Alver Or just like Darth Plageis the novel. That thing was mostly political intrigue.
Revan are you my g ? There was some serious conflicts after the Battle of Endor. And isn't a Cold War one that hasn't but is close to popping off into a hot one ?
@Revan That's pretty much the equivalent of using fleet to sterilize planet, as opposed to Death Staring it. Cities could be leveled before. Nobody remembers Rotterdam which became rubble, firebombing of Tokyo, Hamburg, Warsaw, Ternopil,...... or hundreds of different cities that were outright forgotten after destruction. (like Troy)
But everyone remembers Hiroshima and Nagasaki and most people fear nukes to this day
@@Poctyk That's because those tactics are no longer deployed. A quick glance back in history easily shows that back when everyone was firebombing and generally leveling entire cities 'by conventional means' the fear of that was about equal to most people's fear of nuclear arms during the height of the cold war. In both cases, your home is burnt and crushed to the foundation and majority of the people you know wont survive.
With your comparison, there is definitely a significant difference. With carpet bombing and firebombing there still is a significant window of reaction time to make it to bomb shelters, whereas with a nuclear bomb it's just one blink away from being vaporized into a 'shadow' on the ground.
Of course, in the case made by Spacedock it'd actually be more of equivalent to either using a few cobalt bombs to render earth uninhabitable, or using a big gamma ray burst gun to do exactly the same. The outcome is the same, the survival rate would both be zero, and the allowance of a reaction time would be abysmally small. And the cobalt bombs are significantly cheaper to produce.
"The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the force."
I've been looking for this comment to upvote it.
Vader understood literally from the beginning - it's a toy. The Emperor built these things out of pure hubris. It was one of the things that led to his downfall.
Johnson managed to create higher stakes with a few walkers and a glorified battering ram.
@@ungraa2149 but nowhere near as high as the stakes in those casino games, such genius direction
"But what if we can destroy *SEVERAL* planets at once from several star systems over?"
"Well, I guess that's a bit closer..."
"And what if we can send a fleet of ships to destroy hundreds of planets at once?"
"OK, sure. But only until we can train up a couple more Sith Lords."
I really like Halo's approach to this with the covenant having the ability to 'glass' a planet, it looks terrifying but also leaves enough of the planet to be exploited
UNSC: Hold my NOVA bomb
@@jesse1791 nova bomb is awesome, but deploying it is so difficult that only two of them are actually exploded (joyous exultation and glyke)
And the Covenant would do it either a) if they had zero interest in taking a planet, or b) the UNSC managed to hold the line on the ground (which they could do reliably, even if it was costly) and the Covenant took the maxim "if at first you don't succeed, call in air support" to its logical extreme.
Me too. By the way, I understand the "ceremony" of glassing a planet has a great religious and perhaps symbological significance to the Covenant, which is in my view a really good way of justifying why would anyone want to go that much overboard in destroying a planet (when something like messing up the planet's atmosphere or punching a few holes in the mantle to destabilize it seismologically would probably more than suffice). Something like when the Romans destroyed the ancient capital of Carthage, when they (according to a legend, probably did not happen in reality, but either way...) leveled the city completely, overturned every standing stone, plowed the ruins and the fields around the ruins, and salted the ground so that nothing could ever grow there, and then burned all the books that mentioned the Carthage, and made talking about it punishable by death, so that every trace and every memory of their hated enemy disappears from history forever.
Viral bombing in 40k is even better as you can loot equipment afterwards. Pretty sure the virus dies or eats it's self quickly too.
No radiation. Just a mess of biological goo.
"The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force."
-Darth Vader
If that were true, why bother building the Death Star?
And yet the Force never solved anything in Star Wars...
@@docsavage8640 it did, many times
@@publiusvelocitor4668 to incite fear. but it wasn’t Vader’s idea he just had to go along with it
Is there someone capable of destroying a planet with the Force or something? It sounds ridiculous.
"Hello. I am Grand Admiral Thrawn and welcome to my TED Talk to discuss why we need my TIE Defenders instead of the Death Star"
Swordhand1 Gold comment
@@johnhenryeden1647 The Death Star's main purpose was to make deep core mineral mining more accessible.
At least before the Dark times. Before the Recon.
@@bkane4546 Well...
When you blow the planet you're trying to mine,a lot of potential profit goes to waste.
@@unitedstatesofamerica4987 The stuff the planet was made of doesn't magically vanish, it just turns into little bite size melty asteroids you can pick up at your leisure. Or at least, that's how I thought it worked. Maybe in Star Wars it just despawns
4 Star Destroyers can be enough to conquer a galaxy.
(Admittedly by pressuring people to give you their smaller ships to increase your fleet, but still.)
It was never good writing, but the logic is there: what's supposed to be scarier, 1 planet killer or 100 planet killers? The answer: a man who can shoot lightning out of his fingertips
I despise that I’m aware of who you are referring to.
@@phoenixpoole7667 Gooooooood
@@yb000 DEW IT
if he's laughing maniacally, he's dangerous, thats just how the world works
I laughed in the theater when he basically emp'd the entire skyline, for some reason at that instance the sound editors thought it'd be appropriate to put a bass boosted over a supposed serious scene.
That's why the starforge from the old republic games was such a smart superweapon. It was basically a giant autonomous factory that could build armies while remaining outside of the conflict. The perfect weapon to conquer and rule the galaxy with overwhelming might or precision
The best thing is it is an other take on super weapons, not just "very big boom gun"
KOTOR is a top, top game. And yes the Star Forge is the perfect weapon. Although more realistically it couldn’t suck a star forever, rather it’d probably suck it dry to the point where it becomes a brown dwarf. Personally a realistic Star Forge would suck a star to a certain point and use transmutation (basically the opposite of what a nuke does, turning energy into matter) or starlifting to convert vast quantities of energy and plasma into a massive navy of ships.
@@therealspeedwagon1451 Still. If it is possible to move Star Killer base to another star (which seems to be case), than it is probably also possible to take Star forge to another solar system.
@@motdurzazbratislavy6802 but you never see that in the original game. It is presumed to have been sucking on it’s star since it’s creation 30000 years ago. Either it has only recently been reactivated as we just aren’t told that or it’s somehow been sucking on it’s star since the very beginning. Either way if someone were to add it into a game like Stellaris then I’d like it to have a moving to other stars feature.
@@therealspeedwagon1451 Still, it is reasonable to think, that Starforge can by moved, even if had to be dragged by fleet, if need. Even if such need did not occurred yet.
Disney: We have an original idea, you all shut up. Our Death Star has more lasers than the original Death Star! It’s so much more original!
*coughs in reused name of decanonized vidya game character*
Don't forget that it's bigger too!
ROS wasn't about originality it was pure nostalgia bait to try to win back the fans that whined about TLJ.
"No more planet-killing death rays, please." - What Princess Leia probably said after Alderan bit the dust.
And Alderaan gone, and Alderaan gone
Alderaan bites the dust, yeah
Hey, I'm gonna get you too
Alderaan bites the dust
Here a Idea. A weapon that has the ability to mind control a star system in the galaxy. I know it a terrible idea.
*Dyson no Bakuda BAIT ZA DUSTO*
@@elcalabozodelandroide2 *_killer queen has touched that planet_*
40k: Sir, the planet is growing tentacles.......
ALRIGHT, FIRE! *Slams head repeatedly on Exterminatus button*
Star Trek, if it were competent: "Eh, tractor beam a few country-sized asteroids in its direction and call it a day. Anyone up for a *Lord of the Rings* LARPing campaign in the holosuits?"
Join us, come to Chaos ;)
...we have cookies ^-^
Welp, why don't you chuck the crust like us?
The Orks as the most technologicaly inferior of the main-factions in 40k, besides the Tyranids, were able to completly obliterate a Hive City the size of a whole country and bring massive damage to half of the planet, just by shooting a giant asteroid to change its course towards the city.
"Blowing up planets is useless and not strategically viable."
Tell that to Ender Wiggin.
That was different, that was a last ditch attack plan
if i recall correctly he regretted doing it and realized it was unnecessary after the fact
@@clukskin Yeah, if only we had focused more on learning to comminicating with the Formics we would've found out they had no intention of colonizing Earth after their first colony fleet.
But hindsight is 20/20
Wasn't only the surface of the planet destroyed? Therefore making it mineable with the proper equipment.
@@addisonm6465 that thing got stronger the more it hit, the planet was turned into the mother of all bombs and detonated
"Blowing up planets is stupid"
Freeza: So anyways I started blastin....
I think that it’s funny how in WH 40k, destroying planets is reserved for only if the imperium feels it can’t reclaim a planet, and is kind of hit its way of saying “yeah you won but now we’re going to make sure that if we can’t have it nobody can”
Exterminatus isn't really planet destruction, it's planet devastation. There is usually something left
@@principetnomusic it depends of what kind of exterminatus were talking about.
@@marckevinjavier1897 Most forms of Exterminatus do not destroy the planet, AFAIK. This is what makes Blackstone Fortresses so unique
@@principetnomusic Not quite.
Cyclonic Torpedoes in Warhammer are capable of destroying a planet entirely and they are fired from an Imperator Battleship.
@@principetnomusic A cyclonic torpedo can quite literally rip a planet into pieces from the inside.
Palpatine: Lord Vader, we shall now discuss the construction of the Death Star. This ultimate weapon will be capable of destroying entire worlds.
Vader: Why?
Palpatine: Why not?
"Remember the first of the Sith tenets."
"The 'Rule of Cool'?"
"Precisely."
Well can't argue with that logic,
Because Palpatine needed to make himself feel better about the shriveled state of his little lightsaber
Honestly I feel “Why not?” is a better reason to blow up planets
Palpatine: “Hey, hey, Darth?”
Darth Vader: “What?”
Palpatine: (Draws a circle on a napkin.) “That. That’s what.”
Darth Vader: “A circle? It’s a good circle, I’ll give you that.”
Palpatine: “No, no, no. Space station.”
I mean it does send a pretty strong message.
“I can beat you with strategy!”
“True, but your victory will not last for long. Your home is meaningless when I can simply take it away, with no chance of ever reclaiming it. You may have no idol or martyr, no proof of your suffering. You will have no mercy or sympathy. You have won the battle. I have won the war.”
He is clearly a pragmatist to a fault, that he doesn't even understand people are motivated by other factors than material gains.
yeah, but the whole point is that you don't need to go that far to send the message. you could make a weapon that renders the surface of a planet completly inhabitable, wich would literally have the same level of intimidation and it would be thousands of times easier to achive than a weapon that can destroy an entire planet. the amount of energy you require to completly blow up a planet is so fucking high that you would basically require a planet's worth of energy to make it happen... one that you can't use from the planet you defeated, cause you fucking blew it up.
all the resources that would go into a single planet buster could instead be used to make hundreds if not thousands of ships with weapons more than capable of rendering a planet inhabitable, wich I feel would be far more effective as a deterrant
I mean technically if people weren't scared of a thing, destroying a planet should actually do quite the opposite of cowering in fear. It should piss off everyone around you, to the point that realizing they may be next, would actually unify your enemies. Like pissing off a hive to the point of launching rebellions at once all across the entire empire.
Its as stupid as parking a tank in-front of every home in an entire country to "threaten" the country into "complete submission".
@@Deoix9877 the death star actually did that when it was unfinished, it needed 3 shots to destroy a planet, being the first one the one that left the surface of the planet lifeless, if the rebels didn't stopped with that... Well, i guess the next step is very obvious
Situations where blowing up a planet has strategic merit:
1. Denying an enemy an important strategic resource which you can't/don't expect to hold for the duration of the war. (Not the best strategy for AFTER the war, but a decent one during it)
2. Destroying a heavily fortified planet, which you can't capture/contain through conventional means, that presents a risk of being used as a staging ground for counter offensives/hitting your advancing lines in the flanks if left alone.
3. Making other people say "Holy shit these lunatics are actually blowing up planets despite how pointless we all know it is, I don't want to pick a fight with that level of crazy.".
4. When the planet itself, not the things that live on it, is the thing you're in a fight with (pretty unusual, but plenty of sci-fi's have the occasional sentient planet and at least half of them are kind of arseholes).
5. When the main protagonist/antagonist is there but you're pretty sure even their plot armour won't protect them against the searing heat of the planetary core followed by the irradiated vacuum of space (results may vary, especially when the protagonist pulls a random new force power out of their arse every 5 minutes for no real reason).
This
you forgot... 6. planetary shields can (star wars has planetary shields) withstand standard orbital bombardment for weeks, months if not years. only way other than using super weapon would be ground invasion.
6. To clear the way for a faster-than-light space travel device. Both Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the Justice League cartoon use this idea, even though Hitchhiker’s is the only one to actually blow up the planet. In Hitchhiker’s, the destruction of Earth was to clear the way for a space highway, while in Justice League aliens were going to open a wormhole at Earth’s location to get around the defenses surrounding the homeworld of the other aliens they were fighting.
@@smithfinland214 Or they invent a planetary shield that can throw back your superlaser and destroy the planet destroyer.
@@rayn0577 The necessity of it in both cases is questionable since planets don't tend to stay in one place.
Sun Tzu's art of war: "Never destroy what you can use".
"Stop using my name and making random quotes that I never said"
-Sun Tzu
"LEEEEEERRROOOOYYYYY JJJEEENKIINNSSSS!!!!" ---- Miyamoto Musashi
@@randomxnp Hey remember that time a faction created a shit ton of cheap expendable battle droids which they threw away like used toilet paper? you know those droids that could be easily retrofited with drill hands or just given pickaxes and pointed towards the nearest group of rocks?
You're right the empire could easily just bomb a planet into molten slag then just dumped a shit ton of cheap droids onto their to shovel anything valuable into cargo holds.
@@Yusa_Beach "I didn't write a book and you can't prove it" -Sun Tzu.
More like common sense. Not even a thief would destoy something that can be stolen and own.
Wait... is this man actually trying to find reason within the new Star Wars movies?
How TF are you verified
NVM, you have more subs than i thought.
Wait is this man trying to find reason in the starwars movies?
@Jon Galt Just because he commented on something doesn't mean he's begging for subs he watches UA-cam and comments on stuff like everybody else.
@@X_ASuccessor don’t use logic, they don’t like that online
"You can just use laser bombardment to make a planet uninhabitable"
*The Covenant enters the chat*
To this day I can't believe someone pitched "The emperor is back and he has a thousand star destroyers and they all have death star cannons." And that made it all the way through the production process into theaters without being laughed out of Hollywood.
If idiot starwars fans will pay, anything is believable
That plot device has such a stong box-office pull that I literally only learned of it today - in 2021.
You see, the reason for this is the fact Disney makes their new movies out of JJ Abram's feces, braindead writers, bad actors, and some things from the original series to make it at least seem like star wars.
And their weakness is that they don’t fucking know what direction up is. Fucking look out the window and you can find out
Because the generation of true Star Wars loving fans who know and care about the lore is gone, and now it's back to young Star Wars loving kids who quite possibly may never have even seen the original movies
"blowing up a planet is stupid"
*DID I SMELL HERESY IN HERE!?*
*Hears the feint bellow of a "Waaaghhh" in the background*
EXTERMINATUS
Chaos cultists: Hello there!
E X T E R M I N A T U S
Exterminatus doesn't blow the planet up though, just gives it a clean slate to start over
Stellaris has multiple super weapon choices. My favorite is the deluge cannon that just downs the planet in water, which makes it an ocean world for you to inhabit.
It’s all good to me as long as it cracks a unyielding fortress world system
“Destroying a planet destroys its resources.”
In terms of things like money and labor, yeah.
But things like minerals are arguably easier to mine when the planet’s in pieces.
Pieces yes, obliterated no
@@messofstuff1116 not sure how F=m·a is really relevant, especially in a science fantasy setting like star wars. seems like F=G(m1·m2)/(r^2) would be more significant… and since in star wars you can go anywhere in space by pointing your ship in that direction and flying in a straight line (but standing on a planet apparently _does_ imply being strongly affected by that planet's gravity), i don't see why mining a large number of much smaller "asteroids" in "zero" gravity would be any more difficult than mining one very large body with a much stronger gravitational attraction-limiting the practical size of any mining equipment
This makes me think of another thing:if you blow up a planet while only being a few hundred kilometers away, wouldn't your fleet get destroyed by debris?
Its debatable how much easier it is to mine given that the debris is now spread over the entire orbit (like Sol's asteroid belt) and you have lost the capability to mine, process into raw material and then ship this raw material from a planet's surface, so now you have to tug a lot of raw ores around, expending much more energy.
Yeah, all those pieces are now blasted in every direction possible, in vacuum space, with nothing to stop them or slowing them down, so have fun with those.
I always love this quote from Leviathan Wakes, the first Expanse novel.
"That ship could kill a planet, shit, it could kill anything."
"You don't need a ship like that to kill a planet, just start dropping anvils out the airlock."
there's been so many planet killing weapons used in star wars i feel like the people of the galaxy wouldn't even find it terrifying anymore.. they'd just be like, "Oh you have a planet killing laser too? Look, this is like the 5th time i've been threatened by one of those, just do whatever i dont care anymore"
Thats anothing thing alot of legends super weapons were interesting hell not all of them destroyed planets was just a massive automated shipyard of doom
Similar to how we see nukes today, back then it was a treat
Now it has become a meme,
"What? North Korea has nukes? Well..... Ho cares"
"Oh, you have a planet-destroying laser? Whoop-de-doo, so does everyone else. Jim Bob next door has one in his backyard. We keep petitioning the Neighborhood Association to make him get rid of it."
"Y'all better respect mah Second Amendment rights! Also, Sue likes to hang the clothes out ta dry on the laser."
The EU, or Legends, was full of them: Galaxy Gun, Sun Crusher, Night Cloak.
@@jeffreyknickman5559 The Night Cloak was acceptable, if unwieldy. It didn't destroy the planet, it just made it uninhabitable, and you could retract the cloak to recolonize the world once your horrible work was done. It just had the fatal flaw of needing many, many satellites to work properly, which meant that any opposing ships or planetary defenses could destroy a few of them and ruin the cloaking effect.
For the sequel trilogy, it's just more examples of lazy story writing. In the originals, at least George Lucas was telling a story that resonated with the audience. We were a quarter of a century into the Cold War. The Cuban Missile Crisis was 15 years earlier. The threat of total annihilation from powerful weapons was real. It meant something to the people in the theaters because it was lived experience.
The sequel trilogy had a chance to explore new settings, characters, and plots. Artificial Intelligence, Drone warfare, and Climate change are all modern analogues to nuclear weapons that could have been woven into the movies in some form by clever story writers. Instead, all we got was a rehash of a four decade old story that had already been told better. What a waste.
Now the fear of nuclear holocaust is in everything as we count down the days till russia, trump, and china work together in unison to end all life.
How come drone warfare and artificial intelligence arent new?
Didnt the clone wars did that already with the droid army of the separatist
@@mr.fantastic6568 i think op is talking about
how experminetal and advance drone and ai
considering how incompentent the droid army was, but it mass production was impressive,
that and ai is way too emotional to be really ai, which never gets explored
combined these too into a massive compentet droid army that can easily mass produced and can be explored about their humanity(we can take from the old cannon/legends and based off the droids the Yuuzhan Vong fought and fleed from
it also ties to more modern questions of ai and its relation to humanity and how dangerous it can be as well as continuation of lucas theme of weapons of mass desturction combined with more modern issues, could have been interesting
which is what op was talking about how none of this could have been explored but wasn't due to incompetence(it doesnt' have to follow this but something interesting not fucking star wars 4-6 again)
So write your story’s when the audience has lower standards?
@@SpottedHares what?
It began as a cool concept as a way to up the stakes and show the empire’s power. It was a WOW moment on 1977.
Overdoing it, you’re right, there’s no point.
"You could just strip-mine it for resources" classic imperialism
A lot of people strip mine today.
It’s called the Galactic *Empire* isn’t it?
You mean: The World Devestators?
@@KillerOrca Hence why they are my favorite superweapons. Well the and the TK amplifier on Naga Sadow's ship.
This is actually an interesting point. In Legends continuity, a lot of the people designing these Imperial superweapons did so under the false premise that they would be more utilitarian in nature, with a specific example being the Death Star reportedly made to destroy uninhabited planetoids to make the ores inside said planets vastly easier to mine and gather. (see the Jedi Academy trilogy)
“Blowing up planets is pointless”
Dbz villains: **laughs hysterically**
In DBZ it makes more sense because unlike in SW, where blowing up a planet takes a ridiculous amount of energy, there anyone with a significant enough power level can do that. even then, Frieza blew up planet Vegeta to exterminate any Sayian there (and it's not like a planet of space warriors who conquer other planets to survive would have many resources on its own anyway), while villains like Cell and Buu are basically immortal and don't care what happens to the universe.
*pointless hating because i know too much thing about that anime*
@@succubastard1019 hi
@@succubastard1019 Uh what? There are like four people in db that have actually blew up a planet and its a very big deal, treated as such by nearly every character. Just because a lot of people can do it it doesnt mean that its effortless. And no cell or buu arent immortal. Cell got defeated by ssj kid gohan and bu well, can be thrown in the sun. Its his regeneration that makes him strong. At this point piccolo 17 and gohan are stronger
yeah, frieza just tapped on the ground and blew earth up in the dbz resurrection
doesn't take a lot of energy
I once made a long trip into star wars wiki and apparently there was going to be some extragalactic enemies with planet-sized living spaceships or weaponized planets or something and the death star was probably a precaution against those. The movie sequels threw all of that out and replaced it with what exists now.
Yes, those extragalactics are called the Yuuzhan Vong, their colony ships, the worldships, are the size of the Death Star, and related to the fight against them was a force-imbued sentient planet called Zonama Sekot which was so powerful, it could turn a tree on its surface into a DSII-style superlaser.
The EU was never canon just quietly tolerated because Lucas liked the easy money.
As a Stellaris player, I enjoy my Planet Killing super weapons.
Sure you have the means of bombarding a planet until it hits Tomb World status, but it could still be re-colonized or support something again. Sometimes, you don't want that.
It's like the old adage, a bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush. It is better to control a smaller number of planets that are much closer together an easier to control and police than to try to spread across the whole galaxy if it takes too long for get from place to place. It's better tactically to blow up entire planets (and even entire systems) to render them completely lifeless forever. Yes, you lose a lot of resources by doing that, but you're also denying all of your enemies those resources as well.
With a true scorched earth campaign (which honestly stellaris turns into quite often) you may end up destroying every single habitable planet in the galaxy aside from the ones you control in your little corner simply because it isn't worth the effort to maintain one that is so far away that you can't reasonably defend it. Why build it up and have it there producing resources when another power could come along and take it from you?
Blow it up.
With a fleet of a given size, it has to be stretched thinner and thinner to protect/police a larger and larger empire. Keeping it condensed into one smaller area makes it more stable and secure. And sure you could use people from new planets you take over to increase the size of your fleets, but do you really want to risk enormous swathes of your fleets turning against you because they are staffed by people that HATE you? You're better off sticking with a smaller fleet of loyalists.
So I can absolutely see the logic in blowing up Alderaan. Im sure it paid a lot of taxes and gave a lot of resources to the empire, but as it had such a strong rebel presence, it also gave enormous amounts of money and resources to the rebels. And at the strategic level and the grand scheme of things, losing that planet might mean less than a 1% decrease in what the empire is collecting across the galaxy, but could be 50% or more of where all rebel resources are coming from.
I would've blown up Alderaan as well. The rebels weren't exactly galvanized to do anything as a result of its destruction, they were already planning on an all out assault against the Death Star simply because it existed long before the planet was dusted, they were just waiting on the schematics with vulnerabilities to arrive.
Ultimately, nothing would ever stop the rebels though. They're terrorists. And just like real world terrorists, it doesn't matter how outnumbered they are or outgunned, if they are willing to die for their cause it doesn't matter how hopeless it is they will still kill as many people as possible and cause as much damage as they can on the way out. And you'll never be able to kill them all, even using extreme methods, because for every one you kill you are just making more of them.
then i use the gigastructal engineering G.L.U.E to repair it before using the Dynamic Core Igniter or ACOT Emissary to colonize it again
"Blowing Up Planets is Pointless."
*Galactus:* So, anyway, I started eating.
Fr lol
But he doesnt blow them up, he literally consumes them
@@purpledragon1945 It has the same end result.
@@purpledragon1945 and perhaps gain nutrition value too from all those resources too like vitamins.
That's basically just strip mining while the planet is still inhabited...
"Blowing up planets is stupid"
"So anyway, I started declaring Exterminatus..."
"Admiral!"
"Yes, Lord Inquisitor."
"See that planet over there?"
"Yes, Lord Inquisitor."
"It's heresy."
"At once, Lord Inquisitor."
Proceed to repeatedly mashing the Exterminatus button.
@@biwarayoganata Some death warrants write themselves, you know?
Finally, someone who gets it.
@@biwarayoganata
"Admiral!"
"Yes, Lord Inquisitor."
"See that planet over there?"
"Yes, Lord Inquisitor."
"Well, I don't want to."
"At once, Lord Inquisitor."
Proceed to repeatedly mashing the Exterminatus button.
Ursarkar Creed: *proceeds to fuck a legion into titans*
Still orders an exterminatus
Also, for the purposes of terror tactics, being able to show the glassed/rubbled husk of a planet someone might have known would be far more devastating than a new asteroid field is. Seeing the recognisable aftermath of something is far worse than something just being GONE. That's why all the disaster movies go to the expense of showing ruined, abandoned cities instead of having them be completely annihilated. Heck, it's more visceral to have people struggling for survival IN the ruined city than it being empty, too. All about showing how this was something that mattered to people and has been ruined. If you want to scare people, the before and after shots need to be somewhat recognisable as the same thing.
Minor point: it would possibly be easier to mine an asteroid field, especially since you could get at heavy metals otherwise locked into the core. That however uses logic from our world, where asteroids are very far apart, unlike in every action movie ever.
I guess a planet with atmosphere and gravity allows for certain techniques to be used that for reasons like heat, 0g or vacuum can't be used in space
JJ: *makes a joke about there always being another Death Star*
Also JJ: *unironically does it twice*
@@W0NK042 At least be thankful the lens flares were kept to a minimum, with the usual M-boxes in attendance? ;) :P
star wars has so many other planet destroyers than the deathstar, i would like to see the world eater just once. the most that was done to that thing is 1 shield generator was taken out of several it has. from what i know not 1 world eater was ever taken out.
i would've hated if the sun crusher was brought out but i wouldve prefered it to that nonsense
After Lucas did it twice! SMH
maybe instead of another "planet killer" someone should invent a GALAXY KILLER
Mixing movies here:
"Wait, they have another Death Star?"
"First rule of government spending. Why build _one_ when you can build _two..._ for twice the cost!"
That's from, um, um..... First Contact, right?
Gary XHLC “buy one get one free”
@@madisonatteberry9720 No, the second quote is from Contact, with Jodie Foster. *First* Contact is the best TNG Star Trek movie.
In old legends canon there were actually 3 Death Stars. 1. The prototype Death Star was kept secret in a secret location that the empire pulls out and uses later on. 2. The one that gets destroyed at the battle of Yavin. 3. The last one during the battle of Endor.
Hawk66100 The prototype was just the super laser. It was made to demonstrate that the concept was doable.
I love how in the conclusion to Star Wars Rebels, Grand Admiral Thrawn was able to hold the rebels hostage with the threat of a single Star Destroyer bombarding Lothal's Capital City. There was meaning and tactics involved, not just a brute force death laser. Thrawn's ISD Chimaera could bombard the city with ease without killing Imperial officers or damaging Imperial factories. Sure he'd kill civilians and damage their homes and businesses, but that's tiny damage compared to just deleting an important industrial world with a Death Star.
Imho, you are disregarding one thing in the Star Wars universe: planetary shields. Normal turbolaser bombardment just doesn't work on a planet with sufficient shields. I mean, that's the whole plot of The Empire Strikes Back: the Empire found the Rebel base on Hoth, but instead of using the SIX (!!) Star Destroyers to blow the base and its general vicinity on the surface to kingdom come, they mount a planetary invasion specifically to target and destroy the shield generator. If you were correct in that the Empire could have just blown them off the face of the map from space with an orbital bombardment, I'm sure they wouldn't hesitate to scour the ice planet and leave no trace rather than risk an invasion force. However, they are stymied by a shield generator set up by a few thousand (?) rebels on an ice planet.
Think of what an organized planetary defense system could do on a world like Alderaan! A planet simply has the means for indefinite defense against normal energy weapons. This would be a "new" development, though: thousands of years ago in the Old Republic, massive shields like that weren't heard of, so planets like Taris could be razed by orbiting warships. By the time of the Battle of Yavin (or even earlier in the Clone Wars), the most reasonable attack on a planet would be an invasion, since turbolasers were simply too weak to punch through ground-based shields. After all, these shields didn't have to run off of on-board power, they wouldn't (provided good logistics) run out of fuel, they could be extremely spacious and easy to maintenance (instead of in a cramped section of a ship), and they could overlap areas to provide redundancies.
The solution, then, is like breaking down a door: you don't continuously knock on the door until it falls apart in a few days/months/years (orbital bombardment), you a) find a window to bypass it (ground invasion) or you b) gather all your strength and knock it down in one hit with a battering ram (superlaser). The two or three overlapping shields would buckle where the superlaser hit, and the laser would still have enough energy to crack the planet's crust and completely wipe out the resistance. Presto! Now every planet that dares to defy your rule, supplies your enemies with materiel, or builds a conventional fleet to fight you can no longer depend on planets being a safe haven. No more risking hundreds of thousands of your soldiers (a la Starship Troopers) or spending months or years trying to whittle away at the shields with turbolasers. You have struck fear into your enemies' hearts and practically guaranteed victory. As long as you can defend your superweapon and there's no flaw a guilty-conscience architect built into it...
Anyway, the sequels should have scrapped the whole idea to begin with. The story should have been that of a fledgling New Republic holding its own against Imperial remnants (now renamed The First Order), keeping the galaxy safe from the infection of fascism, not another Rebellion/Resistance fighting underdog against Empire 2.0 with a Big Giant Hyper Mega Planet Killer 3000™. The rehashing and power creep is disappointing in the sequels.
Because the only thing more powerful than "planetary shields" is plot armor. Or the lack there of when the writers needs to amp up drama.
@@obsidianjane4413 plot armour is the dumbest argument - it is a thing in real life, it is known as survivorship bias. we OBVIOUSLY don't hear about the rebels that DIDN'T succeed- there was almost certainly LOADS.
@@carbon1255 Except no, because fiction is not real life. You can have, and many authors have killed off the characters you've been following along. Rogue One?
Its not survivorship bias because the characters are literally preordained to succeed/survive. In fact its the exact opposite of that terms meaning.
Or its retcon-ing in the case of prequels or an original work becomes on in retrospect if writers tack on new stories of the characters going on the bigger and better things. The Matrix comes to mind.
The usual way this occurs is because the film/book/whatever succeeded and the studio wanted to cash in on it instead of something that lost money. So in that case, you might be right, but not in the way you intended. lol
Planetary shields can't last forever and they can be knocked down in a weeks, in few months or in one case three years depending on how many star destroyers are used. So should people be more afraid of their planet being destroyed more than being rendered uninhabitable by turbolaser bombardment? Well without a relief force it's just a question of dying now or a few months later.
Alas, his point on asteroids, which we see used as planet-killing weapons at a point in time thousands of years before Alderaan, remains.
It's almost like the Tarkin Doctrine is stupid
It's almost like Dictators use terror to control their population.
@@nobleman9393 sometimes.
@@nobleman9393 "It is better to be feared than to be loved" was Machiavelli's satirical critique of a local lord's excesses, not actual advice. Moreover, if you take it from "Cross us and we'll do bad things to you and yours" to "Cross us and we'll BLOW UP YOUR ENTIRE PLANET," you've made it so impersonal that it has the opposite effect that you intended, as the Empire discovered. People will fear the Empire persecuting their family, and they know that their neighbors probably won't help them for fear of same. When everyone on the planet is going to get blown up because Steve decided to call the Imperial Governor a loser-face, there's nothing left to lose for anyone and nowhere to run, which means it's time to fight. That makes Steve look like a brilliant orator, which means your strategy has backfired badly.
@Joe Curr its already DEAD
@@isimiel3405 its still quite profitable, and my guess is, this is going to be a lesson on just how poorly they can manage things and still turn a profit.
"Ya see all that manpower, skilled labor, technology and resources?"
"Yes, Sir."
"Blow it up."
"What why?"
"DO IT NOW!!!"
.....Sir.....if you like fireworks, we could like, just buy some.
Palpatine: "Dewit!"
@@heyj64 DEW IT NOW
Yes it almost makes no sense to blow everything up when you can: step 1 Beat them down into submission. Step 2 inslave / forced labor for resisting and to make them examples for others. Step 3 Take there resources and have strict military rule over the planet.
code99k but the Death Star caused more rebellion. The tarkin doctrine was used ineffectively.
I really like the way the annihilaser is handled in planetary annihilation, because the concept of that game really suits planet destroying weapons. That being “our adversary must die, how much of the system he takes with him is not our concern.” Being robots that self replicate and are capable of FTL travel, losing a planet is not nearly as bad as letting the other ai stay alive.
Counterpoint: Killing everyone on the planet instead of blowing the planet up isn't as exciting.
That is literally the best damn profile picture I've ever seen. I'm not joking.
But imagine if you would, Princess Leia having to be forced to watch her Planet being blasted from orbit over the course of three days
The mental scars, the English, the PTSD, it's like watching her Planet blow up but slower and worse
Wait wait hold on why not both?
Its like Thrawn actually had his head on straight for criticizing that
Not really. There's some targets that do require that level of fire power, mainly planets with planetary shields, that can also have huge planetary defensive turbo lasers and ion cannons batteries.
Enemy fleets could slip in and out, while the planet is nearly impenetrable, hence why just flat out destroying it is a better answer.
@@Innuendoes True, but do note that Thrawn got around the planetary shields though subterfuge at Battle at Ukio, so there's definitely ways to get around the shield without a super weapon.
It's like the star wars books would have been a massively huge improvement over anything we got in the sequel trilogy.
Also Tyranid/Ork infestations... they justify blowing up planets
@@commandersmith2327 so, those don't exist in SW cannon, but would just nuking/glassing the planet work as well?
"Planets are not these incredibly tough fortresses..."
Cadia: say psych right now
To be fair, Cadia was made to be a fortress not a natural fortress.
It still broke didn't it, even if the guard outlasted it...
@@nathandamaren2093
Yeah. And it took Failbaddon 10k years to break it. That's how tough it was.
i thought one of the reasons to build a super laser was that in renders planetary shields pointless, which render normal planetary bombardment impossible (i.e. battle of hoth)
and here comes the writers to add in contrived plot points.
In real life, if you can get a spaceship like the millenium falcon up to just 90% the speed of light, that ship hitting a planet like earth is going to have enough force to cause significant biosphere collapse. Your transportation alone is your most powerful weapon.
Even completely sundering a planet to pieces can be achieved by an X-wing. Some math can tell you that only a few tons of mass moving at the speed of light can produce enough energy to achieve the same thing as the deathstar.
I always found it funny how I cared way more about what a single AT-ST did in The Mandalorian than what a fleet of planet-killing Star Destroyers did in Rise of Skywalker.
Not emotionally relatable is the answer. The epitome of bad script writing.
Small scale and relatable, compared to "THE STAKES CAN'T BE HIGHER!!!"
@@usul573 I agree with relatable, but that doesn't mean it has to be small scale. You can do big and epic while still being emotionally important, you just script writers that aren't hacks.
@@rkbkirin5975 that's what Captian America civil war did, Not World changing but personally Important.
Mark of quality writing.
“Blowing up planets is pointless”
Me in Stellaris: YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!!!!
I used to be a neutron bombardment purist, but after careful consideration I have discovered that the world cracker is much more satisfying, and you get free minerals out of it.
I use to destroy planets to remove population that make my game run slower.
@@kuzakani4297 This is the real solution to population control.
@@kuzakani4297 lmao thanks for an idea
haha quasi-stellar obliterator go brr
"Why do you like to watch a planet shrivel up and die?"
_Cuz I'm the bad guy!_
The point of the original Death Star was about sending a message, the hypothetical use of the station was more than enough to keep people in line. Alderaan was a warning (as the war seemed to be coming to an end) that if you don't rat out the rebels and stop covering for them, this is what will happen to you.
But then decades later Disney didn't have any great ideas and it got turned into, "I have 10,000 star destroyers and each of them has a death star laser and I'm going to blow all of you up if you... don't... listen to me... for reasons." Or something. It's still hard to believe that concept was brought up by actual adults, let alone put into the last movie. Mind-blowing.
"Comically out of proportion" is the definition of a JJ Abrams movie.
Yeah, that boy has no sense of scale. Abrams is has a small mind. He needs to the scale of his imagination which isn't saying much.
"The reports of his ability has been..... Greatly exaggerated"
"Comically out of proportion..."
This sums up, perfectly, why JJ Abrams sucks as a screenwriter. He's a good director. He's great at visuals. But, when he decides to put pen to paper, all bets are off.
He didn’t write the script
@@Lordoftheringwraiths Except he did, he's listed as one of the two people that wrote the screenplay aka the script for rise of skywalker.
He's not a good director. He uses way too many cuts in all his scenes, doesn't allow the viewer to take in anything that's happening and drives it all at a breakneck pace because he doesn't know how to tell a story visually, regardless of having written it.
Alexandre Martins actually he can. The force awakens isn’t nearly as cut or edited bad as rise of skywalker. Not even Star Trek into darkness had that many cuts. Rise of sky was rushed and that’s why it turned out the way it did.
WhiskeyHound I believe Chris Terrio was mostly responsible (Batman v Superman and Justice League)
I'll prove it isnt pointless by quoting grand moff tarkin
"Fear will put them in there place"
Its used to scare every planet into control
Its as stupid as parking a tank in-front of every home in an entire country to "threaten" the country into "complete submission".
Well Tarkin is stupid and arrogant. Politically clever and intimidating, yes. But a good military doctrinist, no. He's a good politician but a bad military strategist.
Lol, the death Star causes more people to join the rebellion. Tarkin was talking bs.
*their
Mining the dust cloud is much easier than constantly fighting the gravity of the planet in the weight of the objects that you don't want. And it would be easier than get a massive amount of material to build into a structure you like that's better than a ball
I like how SG-1 turned Anubis' planet killer into one big joke. Any time after that in all the Stargate franchises it was a joke even among villains.
Added to that they straight up new hoped the dam thing with a X-302 and a couple missiles
As good as that small arc was it basically just made fun of star wars whilst also taking itself seriously
Anubis at one point even used an asteroid to destroy the Earth. It's like he knew that all he really needed was a big rock and some momentum. It was actually extremely close to succeeding too. Since it was just a big rock, and not a fleet of ha'taks, the Asgard just shrugged and said "Oh well, bad luck there. You had a good run humans."
It's such a good tactic: no crew to man it; no one would immediately pin the blame on you; no need to waste time, money, and effort building it (really, you only need to find one with enough mass and enough energy to fling the thing); with almost no energy emissions, it would be near impossible to detect by sensors (only problem would be detecting its mass) until it was almost too late; and if you miss you just shrug and get another rock.
It only really failed because SG-1's plot armor was in the way.
I know that he used a rock with a Naquada core, and while I think the use of one with that type of core is a pretty stupid idea in general, in the same vein as blowing up a planet with a death laser, it still makes sense within the lore of the show. The bomb that SG1 planned to use to destroy said rock was a nuke... what has Stargate ALWAYS told us about the power of a nuke with Naquada nearby? Anubis was actually pretty smart in using that information against them, a nuke with that much Naquada (nearly 50% of the thing's total mass) would have caused an explosion large enough to destroy the Earth utterly. If they went ahead and used the nuke, they'd destroy the Earth, but if they didn't try the Earth gets wiped out anyway. So, damned if you do, damned if you don't.
And in case this comes up later, they didn't discover the asteroid from the mineral inside. As Carter explained, the asteroid was discovered by a civilian who just so happened to look there at the right time. The reason why that person detected it was due to a fluke. No one should have seen the thing' approach it at all. "We got lucky." She said. She is right, they were lucky; it wasn't because they detected the Naquada, it was because a civilian had just so 'happened' to have checked in that completely random direction. Anubis's plan to use that asteroid was still a pretty legitimate strategy.
And the ship they used to get there had previously crashed on a planet a few episodes ago. If they didn't have that ship, they'd still be screwed (they had 11 days to stop it, but they wanted to keep the thing a secret to avoid panic, and their allies who had ships couldn't help... not good). The engines had failed after exiting hyperspace, and was on a collision course with the rock, they were lucky enough to have survived. After that, they EVENTUALLY discovered that the rock had Naquada. They were then forced to deactivate the nuke, but the controls to the bomb they had to shatter the asteroid was fried after it was armed. After THAT, it was told that ship had multiple hull breaches, and was running out of oxygen. They manually deactivated it (with a LOT of luck due to the wires all being the same color; which by the way, who's bright idea was that?), and went back to the ship. Thanks to Carter pulling another seemingly impossible plan out of her bu-brain, they managed to jump the asteroid from one side of the planet to the other; again, they survived through sheer luck. Carter told them that it was a VERY real possibility that the engines would explode, killing them all. So, to count: that's 3 times they managed to escape death in this episode. Well, actually 4. They survived the jump and the ship didn't kill them, but they were still running out of oxygen. In a couple hours, they would've died from lack of air (really cutting it close for any Earth ship to rescue them), but just then a Tokra ship came in to save them. So, 4 times.
@@unintentionallydramatic Anubis failed because he didn't think sg-1 had a hyperdrive.
@@unintentionallydramatic I know that he used a rock with a Naquada core, and while I think the use of one with that type of core is a pretty stupid idea in general, in the same vein as blowing up a planet with a death laser, it still makes sense within the lore of the show. The bomb that SG1 planned to use to destroy said rock was a nuke... what has Stargate ALWAYS told us about the power of a nuke with Naquada nearby? Anubis was actually pretty smart in using that information against them, a nuke with that much Naquada (nearly 50% of the thing's total mass) would have caused an explosion large enough to destroy the Earth utterly. If they went ahead and used the nuke, they'd destroy the Earth, but if they didn't try the Earth gets wiped out anyway. So, damned if you do, damned if you don't.
And in case this comes up later, they didn't discover the asteroid from the mineral inside. As Carter explained, the asteroid was discovered by a civilian who just so happened to look there at the right time. The reason why that person detected it was due to a fluke. No one should have seen the thing' approach it at all. "We got lucky." She said. She is right, they were lucky; it wasn't because they detected the Naquada, it was because a civilian had just so 'happened' to have checked in that completely random direction. Anubis's plan to use that asteroid was still a pretty legitimate strategy.
And the ship they used to get there had previously crashed on a planet a few episodes ago. If they didn't have that ship, they'd still be screwed (they had 11 days to stop it, but they wanted to keep the thing a secret to avoid panic, and their allies who had ships couldn't help... not good). The engines had failed after exiting hyperspace, and was on a collision course with the rock, they were lucky enough to have survived. After that, they EVENTUALLY discovered that the rock had Naquada. They were then forced to deactivate the nuke, but the controls to the bomb they had to shatter the asteroid was fried after it was armed. After THAT, it was told that ship had multiple hull breaches, and was running out of oxygen. They manually deactivated it (with a LOT of luck due to the wires all being the same color), and went back to the ship. Thanks to Carter pulling another seemingly impossible plan out of her bu-brain, they managed to jump the asteroid from one side of the planet to the other; again, they survived through sheer luck. Carter told them that it was a VERY real possibility that the engines would explode, killing them all. So, to count: that's 3 times they managed to escape death in this episode. Well, actually 4. They survived the jump and the ship didn't kill them, but they were still running out of oxygen. They should've died from lack of air in an hour (far too little time for any Earth ship to rescue them), but just then a Tokra ship came in to save them. So, 4 times.
@@langarasg1463
Anubis plan was to send this naqudah asteroid, knowing that the first instinct of th tauri would be to place a comically large nuke on it, in order to blow it up.
The naquadah of the asteroid would have roided up the nuke, blowing away half the plantets surface.
Masking the attack as a simple rock throw was his way of keeping the asgard out.
He would have succeeded too, had there not been these meddling kids with their junky transport he could not forsee them having.
Emperor palpatine: this is a planet destroying super weapon.
Teacher: palpatine this is the 4th movie you have try this. D-
The Empire only built 2, Disney's star wars ripoff is complete trash and should be disregarded as non-cannon!
@@BlueTeam-John-Fred-Linda-Kelly Facts
And again Palpatine is now In Da Hood building new ones.
@@Josep_Hernandez_Lujan I'm gen z you millenial fuck, just because you don't know what a good movie is doesn't mean you get to attack them.
Actually, in Star Wars it makes a little sense to use big death ray instead of turbo lasers or astroids. Planets almost always have planetary shields capable of repelling turbolaser fire or astroids, sometimes for weeks or months at a time. The advantage of the Death Star and the xystons was that they could just shred the shield and blow up the planet. Not that lucasfilm thought it that far through because if they did they would have scrapped Rise of Skywalker before it entered the planning stage but it is defensible.
Funny thing, in one of the Legends novels (children of the Jedi), one of the i universe charectors says exactly the same thing. Planet killer technology is expensice and wastful. when someone counters that it is a"wonderful deterent" He replies that the events leeding up to Endor prove it isn't.
JJ Abrams: "So we're going to make a third Death Star called Starkiller base, it's 3 times as big as the Death Star, and it doesn't have to move, it shoots multiple lasers through hyperspace at once and could blow up 5 planets at once!"
JJ Abrams 2 movies later: "let's have a million mini Death Stars!"
Thrawn would not like
Worst power scaling yet!!!!!
I mean a plus side as well is that star killer base could threaten multiple planets at one from a different solar system so hit effective since that means at any minute your entire planet could be destroyed with no warning
@@TrueBladeSoul I just wish they'd go more unique for once. Like, why does every star wars movie need a death star, specifically. JJ could go a lot more _out there_ with stuff like a Penrose Bomb (A mirror sphere around a black hole that amplifies energy inside of itself by leeching off the spin momentum of the black hole until it explodes with more force than a quasar), or a Nicoll-Dyson Beam (a dyson sphere that focuses the energy it collects into a laser).
How to take over the galaxy hmmm, death stars the size of cells
The planet cracked before the guard did!
See Abbadon had the right idea
Well technically nobody wanted to destroy Cadia. It was an "accident".
@@thefirstprimariscatosicari6870 nah it was done to stop the pylons form sealing the eye of terror
@@isimiel3405 Yeah, break the planet, break the pylons. Then the Eye swallows everything.
Cept it didnt work out quite that way and we got the Great Rift instead.
@@thefirstprimariscatosicari6870 It wasn't really an accident, Abaddon the Armless Failure started losing and then decided to throw a tantrum, in the form of one of the only 2 (at the time) known remaining Blackstone Fortresses
i love the covenant's way of just turning the surface of a planet into glass
The nuclear bomb and it's most destructive representative the Tsar bomb made 60 years ago, made the idea of planet destroying weapons being a big deal ridiculous even before the the first Star Wars film was made.
One could easily imagine that every warship in the SW universe has like a few dozen missiles onboard with that capability just in case they want to carpet bomb a solar system.
I feel like showing the bombardment of a planet would have actually had more emotional impact than just exploding it in one go. One of the things I liked about Rogue One was that it made the Death Star feel a lot scarier than it ever had before, by having it annihilate a single city... but one the characters had just spent a substantial amount of time in, seeing the people there and what it was like. A bombardment could have scenes like that repeated a dozen times in a montage of destruction to really deliver the scale of the atrocity being committed.
Yeah, that's one of the things I really liked about Rouge One. The Death Star was scary, felt menacing and unstoppable, and it showed exactly how it could be used strategically... aka roll into town and drop a laser nuke to wipe out a local area pretty much immediately.
I liked how it was shown in Rogue One because the planet doesn't just blow up in a comical fashion either, and this is kinda shown in the new movie as well. It doesn't just go off like a bomb, you actually watch as the planet is torn to pieces.
Completely agreed. What happened to Jedha felt scary as hell.
@@dmacbass rogue one was even scarier because they used one reactor and it _melted the face of Jedha._ then you're left to imagine if they used two and it's *That* fear the kept the Empire in power.
@@ToastGamingNCrew Well said.
At best you could argue for the Death Star is that it's Super Laser is so powerful that it could smash through any defenses that planets usually have against orbital bombardment.
They do mention in the empire strikes back that the rebels (on a tiny ice planet with a single power generator) had a shield "capable of withstanding any bombardment". And they had more than a few star destroyers in orbit at the time.
This is true, the single reactor ignition that destroyed Scarif base in Rogue One "missed" because of said planetary shield. I'm sure it also rendered the entire planet's atmosphere completely toxic at the same time though, so any surviving Imperials were still screwed anyway.
@@es4583 whilst you're correct, they could have just bombed the rest of the planet into Oblivion, eventually they will run out of food, air, power, or just will to live (the base is a sealed environment, so atmospheric pollution means little) I was using the rebel base having such a powerful shield as an example to show that such shields exist, a planet could clearly could put up such shields to cover the entire planet, rendering bombardment useless.
@@Santisima_Trinidad Which is actually a thing in Legends, planet-wide shield arrays capable of withstanding months of sustained bombardment. Thrawn had a brilliant strategy to both make everyone believe he was capable of bypassing them and turning the shields into a liability at seperate points in the trilogy.
Wasn’t the shield already destroyed?
I think the counterargument to planet busters at least within the context of episode IV is that the empire wanted to communicate how disposable it's subjects were. since it controls an entire galaxy, there are theoretically thousands of planets they can get resources from and losing one doesn't mean much to them
I think the death star was not a tactical weapon. It was a show of strength. It was even said and shown in the quote "Dantoeen (rebel base) was too remote a target for a proper demonstration, we will fire on Alderan." They also say "fear of this battle station will keep the enemy systems in line, not to mention a star ship can be stopped relatively easily while the death Star was supposed to be practically indestructible.
this makes Halo's covenant glassing beams sound more practical.
Oh yeah, glassing seems downright sensible in comparison. At the end of Halo: Reach, we see that the planet is once again inhabitable, so glassing is both incredibly effective and efficient for colonization.
Esben M And the new age MACs
torres dominguez it makes Exterminatus via Cyclonic Torpedo look practical
@@queencyrys6309 the emporer protects!
@Esben M And the halo rings only exist because the flood are that bloody nightmarish to get rid of.
“I'm completely fed up with superweapons as a plot device in basically anything”
Ace Combat: *nervous sweating*
"But......... asteroids!"
Here's the thing though: although they were put in for gameplay purposes, it actually makes sense for AC to have such a handful of superweapons given the asteroid threat they had to deal with previously (with a few exceptions like the Arsenal Bird, which was a defensive platform against enemy aircraft instead of asteroids). And why not use such powerful weapons which are already at your disposal for war?
I'll give credit to AC for managing to provide a satisfactory worldbuilding explanation for their superweapons
what is that ? shitty game?
@@orkhepaj Beautiful game about Jet Fighting.
Go see it
The metals in a planet's core might well be easier to access when a planet is shattered into small asteroids than while they are under multiple kilometres of rock.
Also, as they pointed out in Star Trek: Generations, blowing up a planet can have significant gravitational effects over astronomical (🤨) distances
Yes, and this effect is one reason the Daleks blow up planets.
Their ships can avoid the effects, while their enemies are stuck dealing with them.
They did that to the Earth Empire, when it held the entire Milky Way. By doing this it took them 24 hrs to eliminate all other life, but Earth.
Half the comments: 'You're right, it is stupid."
Other half: "Dimetrodon isn't a dinosaur."
Behold the power of militarized aut1sm.
@@illbeyourmonster1959 Palpatine's true weapon
and an other part of coments is >> read whole lore not yust chery pick facts you like
*Sad Dimetrodon noises*
Dimetrodon is not a dinosaur, so they are right.
The idea with the Death Star isn’t just “we will destroy you” it’s, “we will completely and utterly crush you and any sign of your existence and there is nothing you can do to stop us.”
I am cracking up. You sound like an accountant from the Imperial Office of Management and Budget
Stellaris Genocide Players: I’m going to pretend I didn’t see that.
Say what you want, genocide is more efficient than blowing up a potentially habitable planet
@@wtr3059 blowing up the whole planet is more efficient if you want to make sure the galactic populance stays down.
@@pikadragon2783 Yes, but you just destroyed potential Lebensraum (we're already talking about genocide vs destroying planets, no need to get your pitchforks), if you know what I mean
@@wtr3059 which is exactly what you want in the late game. You know what those people do, living on some random planet? They make your game lag.
@@pikadragon2783 i don't know, forcing entire species to work themselves to death while not allowing them to procreate seems to be working for my stellaris campaign lol
I love how he breaks down the absurdity of the first order taking over the galaxy with Rey walking up a hill
I did like how Rogue One handled the power of the Death Star better than the other movies. Exaton nuclear explosions on the surface of the planets were awesome.
its so refreshing to have someone who isnt a moron explain sci fi concepts
What do you mean "does it have to be destroyed?" It's in the way of a hyperspace lane bypass, you've got to build to hyperspace lane bypasses.
Is this a hitchhiker's reference?
@@cadkls Yes.
@@cadkls Yup :)
@@cadkls duh
I know this is a reference but that's actually something that a Death Star could be useful for. Hyperspace lanes are plotted based on and around large masses like planets which would pull the ship out of hyperspace, so being able to just annihilate everything from A to B would be extremely useful
This cast my mind back to this scene, where stakes were so much higher:
Londo: Mass drivers? They have been outlawed by every civilized planet!
Refa: These are uncivilized times.
Londo: We have treaties...
Refa: Ink on a page!
THAT is how you raise the stakes.
I was looking for a B5 reference in the comments
Shit, I just saw that episode for the first time. What an amazing show.
What show is this from
@@kyle18934 Babylon 5, sci-fi show from 1994-1998
Yes! Someone else remembers that show! Personally I always thought the Shadows were far more interesting and threatening then any of the antagonists in the Star Wars movies.
The problem with planetary bombardment is that it requires you to be in control of the space surrounding the planet. The Giant Death Ray plotdevice allows you to simply sit at a distance, not care about things like air superiority and still destroy the enemy. Additionally this is much much quicker.
Indeed any interstellar civilization is likely to have the power to render a planet completely uninhabitable. Which is why the Dark Forest Theory from the Three Body trilogy is so compelling.
"Planets are not these incredibly tough fortresses that require massive amounts of technology and innovation to crack"
* *laughs in Cadian* *
Damn planets breaking before the guard.
*Laughs in multiplayer stellaris*
Cadia was literaly destroyed with just a giant wreck crashing into it.
@R Thaosen
Yeah, WHEN ITS OPERATIONAL, when chaos launched the thing at the planet it was NOT. Its basically, just a giant hunk of metal, rock and other shit
@R Thaosen
Okay so it uses warp for energy right? And i saw in battlefield gothic that it was destroyed or disabled before chaos fleet chucked it towards cadia correct?
Now imagine this, what if i had a phone and someone was attacking me? And it was out of batteries because the battery cracked or something in the fight. If threw it at him would the phone burst into flames or just became a kinetic force aka a rock?
"Blowing up planets is pointless"
*black crusade stops* "Well boys, back to the Eye of terror..."
That one Inquisitor: Why do you need a point to blow up a planet?
@@unnamed1613 why blow up a planet when you can just burn it’s atmosphere?
@@m4sherman926 because making things go boom is just more fun.
@@m4sherman926 i dont think that deamons care about an athmosphere, and if its already corrupted by the arch-enemy its no use anyway
Abbadon repairs Cadia with Scotch tape and goes home in peace
I found this while looking for Stellaris videos, and I just want to firmly state that it will not stop me from doing it in game.
At least until it stops making my brain produce happy juice, which is likely never.
Okay, so many people here write that you can still mine the destroyed planet and so on. But what bothers me is that most of these destroyed planets are habitable. Habitable planets are rare, you know? THAT is their main resource, their main prize. Space is full of rocks, metal, ice and all this shit. You can strip mine whole asteroid belts or uninhabitable planets. But finding a place where you can live without depending on life support infrastructure, a place with free radiation shielding, atmosphere recycling, good opportunities for growing crops and so on is pretty hard. Rendering a habitable planet uninhabitable is just such a waste.
"All you really need to render a planet uninhabitable is a bit of speed and a big rock."
_Marco Inaros would like to know your location._
You'd need a few big asteroids for this and mass drivers btw. Though I suppose pushing them at other planets via ship works too.
Excellent reference!
@@lapraslover101 What’s a mass driver? You mean just attaching the rock to a ship and letting go of it when it gets up to speed?
@@mxdanger You can put in a net behind the ship, then let the rock go when you are on the right course. After that you can let gravity do the rest.
Edit: Just realised that you said exactly that :-)
@@mxdanger Rail guns are mass drivers. No propulsive, explosive charge
2:00 I love the 100% realistic, totally not fake asteroid impact simulation. Great video!
it even uses the totally accurate creeper explosion sound haha
It would be useless against planets with planetary shields.
@@Innuendoes
Depends on the shield system but even if a planetary shield could take an asteroid impact it gets degraded, eventually part of it will overload and fail, then you could end up with an impact under the shield.
There are lots of rocks of different sizes out there, you don't have to throw just one nor a small one either... they made a drive system for the Death Star and SSDs after all.
Planets and Stars come in a huge variety of sizes, another problem I had with Star Killer base was they forgot how big stars are compared to planets and how big a difference you can get between a yellow dwarf like Sol or and Red Giant like Betelgeuse, and they are neither the smallest or largest stars we know of.
Well in the old Star Wars, what Disney calls Legends, planets could put up a Planetary Shield that could block bombardment from conventional ships like ISD 1 and 2 ships. They didn't last forever, but they could last days or weeks depending on planets' infrastructure. And in that time reinforcements could arrive to fight the attackers.
But in the new canon shields seem like little more than a suggestion.
"If you cast your minds back to when the force awakens came out
before all of this nonsense about the first order taking over the
entire galaxy in the time it took Rey to walk up a small hill
as told by the opening crawl [of Episode 8]" - Spacedock, why blowing up planets is pointless
This made me laugh out loud a fair bit. well played
“It’s not about the money.. It’s about sending a message.”
I'm gonna say the n word
Or having fun, is what Freeza said.
@@kaironic8231 that’s racist you can’t send the N word!
@@kaironic8231 "GET DOWN MR.PRESIDENT!!!"
That describes it pretty well.
I rolled my eyes so hard on the theater when they announced the "whole fleet of planet killers", I nearly said audibly, "really? We're doing this again?"
It's like if the Nazis got nuclear bombs, but the allies rallied and defeated the Nazis. But then a secret Nazi group survived, got nukes, and just nuked the hell out of all the governments that would stand in their way. But despite that we again stopped their nukes. But oh wait, now the Nazis have a million nuclear submarines each with a nuke, and they have already launched a few nukes.
Like nuclear bombs are so terrible, so horrific, that we decided not to use them again. And while we still do have those bombs, and the threat of nuclear holocaust is kind of still there, we're not using them on each other.
If I were writing a conventional story, a nuke being used would be a big deal. But if I were writing the story the same way the Star Wars sequels have been, I would have dropped 5 nukes in my first book, and acted like it's not a big deal. Then in the third book I'd have introduced a fleet, each ship with a compliment of nukes. Oh and once again one ship already shot off a nuke like it ain't no thang.
But in the real world, multiple countries have nukes, and the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction is very real, hence no one is willing to use these weapons because the nuclear nations all know they will be destroyed in retaliation if they're stupid or crazy enough to fire the first shot.
I'll grant you this though: Considering that the Death Star was being researched and developed as early as the Clone Wars, it's absurd that the New Republic has never developed planet-killer tech of it's own, or at least developed a countermeasure to it in thirty plus years. Add one more reason to the ever growing list of why the sequel trilogy sucks dick.
"Somehow, Hitler returned."
Then Hitler reveals he created Osama bin Laden in a test tube.
I'm pretty sure the original intent for Death Star was just to be a massive base. The planet killer aspect of it was just meant to be the cherry on top for intimidation purposes. In legends and some current comics the Empire much prefers exploiting planets. The movies just glorify the "super duper mega lazaaaar" because they don't know how star wars works.
*Blowing up planets is pointless*
WH40K: “Extermiantus?”
“Yes brother.”
*talks about dinosaurs
*shows a picture of Dimetrodon
well played
Slow clap
Hey, dimetrodon were my favourite dinosaur as a kid (before I knew better).
Ha, yeah, and funny that it shows one seemingly at the extinction event 65 million years ago. Even though technically WE are closer in time to that event than the dimetrodons.
@@aaagagatagtgtt9656 Dimetrodon isnt a dinosaur its actually a synapsid. Basically we're more related to dimetrodon then it was related to dinosaurs.
@One Deprived Boi - Hence the “before I knew better”.
"You only need to ask the dinosaurs"
*shows Dimetrodon*
Synapsid rageeee.
Since this has become kinda popular I'm just gonna say that the conflation of these guys with dinosaurs you see everyone doing is especially disappointing when you consider how many people think dinosaurs having feathers makes them look too nice when in fact there's like two hundred million years of things older than and later living alongside and after the non-avian dinosaurs that at most had some fur and looked like they crawled out of hell who need some love that those people just refuse to acknowledge.
Seriously, if velociraptor being a shorty with feathers makes you sad, try Carnufex. That's not a synapsid like Dimetrodon but seriously look at it. And if you want an actual fucking hell hound try any Gorgonopsid. Also there's Mosasaurs. And Sarcosuchus. And Sauropterygians. And just a lot of living reptiles.
*eye twitches*
It was a dinosaur but it died long before 65mill years !! More like it 250mill years ago...
The Dimetrodons were a very advanced race. So advanced, they threatened the galaxy and were exterminated by aliens with PKW (Planet Killing Weapon) set to "low".