What People Get Wrong about Super Weapons
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 มิ.ย. 2024
- There are a few things that everyone always gets wrong about Super Weapons in my opinion, and there is one which I think is clearly the most powerful! We'll talk about that and more on today's Star Wars Lore video!
#starwars #starwarslore star wars lore star wars superweapons
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Japan learned this the hard way in naval warfare terms. The Imperial Japanese Navy built the Yamato and Musashi superbattleships in line with Mahanian Naval Theory. They held them back through most of the war in the Pacific intending to use them in the theorized decisive battle, so much so that the Yamato became referred to as the "Hotel Yamato". They consumed vast amounts of precious fuel and steel that the Japanese had little of. When the two ships did go out to battle the first time, the Yamato was driven off by a handful of destroyers and destroyer escorts that fought like hell. They were both later sunk by USN carrier aircraft never having seen the battleship-to-battleship combat that they were built for.
There were six Carrier Escorts and several hundred planes helping Taffy 3 as well, but considering the rest of the Center Taskforce, yeah, Japan did nothing.
i mean, every Megalomanic Weaponsystem is that, like the super Heavy Railway Guns, impressive Firepower ... that bind over a 1000 Men and took ages to set Up and therefore, speaking in RPG Terms, had a terrible DPS but lots of downsides or the Bismark Battleships, the Tirpitz was more or less useless bound to a norwegian Fjord while the Bismark where in Instant target, like the Malevolence that had the Hunt as it's inspiration.
Luckely the Allied Forces had better Commanders that pult the plug on their crazy Ideas like Habakkuk or backed the smarter Ideas, like Sonar, etc.
Never saw offensive use but did battle it out in the end, the plans were also destroyed to keep the USA from getting it , they were amazing they just didn’t control the air in the second half of the war so would risk the propaganda of losing them at sea would have killed moral
During the Battle of Leyte Gulf, Musashi was sunk by an estimated 19 torpedo and 17 bomb hits from American carrier-based aircraft on 24 October 1944. Over half of her crew was rescued. Her wreck was located in March 2015
The Yamato-Class kinda makes sense in terms of Japan's whole "Decisive Battle" doctrine (see the Long Lance Torpedo, Fubuki-Class Destroyer, and the entire Kido Butai), but that entire doctrine was flawed to begin with, and the way the Japanese fought the war prevented them from playing to the strengths of the plan anyway.
But I agree, someone, somewhere, got sidetracked by the whole "Big Gun go Boom!" thing.
actually Musashi was with Yamato at Leyte gulf, only she was sunk by aircraft before reaching the Samar island where handful of destroyers and escort carriers scared off the mighty Yamato....
Germans had similar experience with their massive battleships, Bismarck managed to sink Hood, but was hunted down soon thereafter. Tirpitz spent entire career dodging airstrikes in Norwegian fjords. Her only usefulness was keeping few RN battleships occupied on standby to defeat her should she be foolish enough to break out.
If I would say , WW2 superweapons would be industrial power of US and Soviets. Swarms of planes and tanks , and in US case also ships being built , but unlike star forge in hundreds of different places. If I would compare, it would be empire's Military Industrial complex ....
Would choose the Star Forge. Despite the lack of destruction being able to form a massive fleet in a short amount of time while also being able to use it to make parts for another super weapon would prove very beneficial and will play a very important role for a said empire.
Star Forge, World Devastators and Iokath.
The Starforge isn’t a super weapon.
@@deriznohappehquite War is logistics.
@@jtjames79 can't imagine the logistics for keeping the death star operational
Yeah instead of a superlaser, get the weapon that can spew out death stars and xystons.
During the Yuuzhan Vong War, Luke Skywalker actually wished that they still had the Galaxy Gun in order to blow up Yuuzhan Vong worldships. In terms of size and everything, it was perfect for the job; it could alter its' power, it could be moved, albeit slowly, and with enough defences the New Republic could have sat back and blasted the worldships one by one, pushing back the advance with relatively little risk.
In fact, I think this is where the theory came from, that Palpatine knew the Vong were out there and had been preparing for them. In deed the Deathstars would have been well suited to killing Worldships
World Devastators would've been hilarious to see used against them, literally eating their fleets up and spamming droid fighters at them.
@@zephyr8072 That would have been the Vong's second worst nightmare; after the Ssi-Ruuvi's thing.
@@zephyr8072 Not to mention supremely poetic
Starkiller Base would be my choice. Hear me out: if you turned a planet into essentially a galaxy gun, keep it hidden, and even if it gets found station a fleet around it, you could hold the galaxy hostage. The only real problem is if it gets found and the “galaxy comes together” to defeat it like in rise of skywalker. But that would never happen because of the terror techniques you could use to enslave the galaxy to your will using the threat of systemary destruction to your advantage.
One thing that the Mobile Suit Gundam universe does well is show that even "low-level" super weapons like the Apsalus are massive resource drains that are borderline unreliable.
Super weapons should be overpowered glass canons
It balances them out
@@baneblade__ I feel like a better balancing system would be the power consumption like maybe a planet killer that needs to divert almost all power to the gun before it fires
@@chaoticclonestudios yeah exactly
Nukes are still nukes in gundam. And when that doesn't work colony drops can ruin planets. And smaller suits are far to vulnerable to hijackings. And finally we also know from gundam self improving self replicating weapons(e.g. dark/devil gundam) are a terrible idea for lack of control.
Genesis and Requiem from Gundam Seed i feel is a somewhat ok exmaple but could be wrong
Maybe it doesn't qualify in the traditional definition of a superweapon, but the yuuzhan vong world brains were exceptionally deadly in the sense that once they took hold, basically everyone on the planet was dead while maintaining the planet itself. But they also were really just in charge of coordinating a host of other resources and processes so I don't think it counts?
How about simply a finished second Death Star, without the construction flaws of the first one. With a tight shield against small fightercraft and Starships alike :)
That would have been effective.
Eh... I feel like the shield would be unnecessary. I mean nothing could really penetrate the DS in the first place.
Also the second death star didn't have the weakness of the first. The reason it wasn't completed was because they wanted to use it as a way to destroy the rebels in one swoop.
You can blame two people for what happened. Blame Xizor for suggesting to Palpatine to use it to lure the rebel alliance into attacking it, and blame Palpatine for being foolish enough to jump for that sugestion when Xizor was playing him for a fool.
The Darksaber is my favorite just because the idea of someone building a superweapon to challenge a galactic superpower and then having it turn out to be a hunk of junk that doesn't work and gets smashed between two random asteroids is hilarious to me.
Consider what it was.
Imagine if El-Chapo decided to build a nuke. But he built it by taking some uranium and duct-taping some dynamite around it in the hope that this would now be a nuclear bomb. And then his brilliant plan was to use this nuke to blackmail America and China into giving him shit.
I wish... I could quantify to you how much I absolutely love Legends sometimes. When you really think about it, some of the shit there is some next level comedy. And not in a bad way.
@@Killzoneguy117 That'd be a dirty bomb. Still pretty dangerous (you're spreading radioactive material everywhere, after all), but of course not the same level as actual fission or fusion warheads.
I would opt for either a Super-class Star Destroyer or a Death Star. Hear me out.
War isn't just about destroying enemy assets. It's about breaking the enemy's will to fight. All offensives have an element of showmanship in them. And while other superweapons may have more power, few have more STYLE than the Executor or the original Death Star. The Executor just looks evil. It's built to make any enemy die. And you know it going up against it. It hits that visceral part of our brain that remembers what spears are--a direct attack on our monkey-brain and most primitive instincts.
The Death Star, on the other hand, is saying "I'm so powerful I'm not bound by planets." A society like that found in Star Wars would appreciate that. Remember when Han was incredulous about the claim that the Death Star was a space station? That was a demonstration of the bone-deep understanding that society had of just how much power the Death Star represented. Even ignoring the superlaser, having that thing show up in-system would be psychologically overwhelming. Imagine: You're walking home from the pub one night, look up, and see a second moon. And slowly the realization dawns on you: This isn't a moon. This is the Empire. They're here. And you can't escape it; every time you look up you'll see it. It will cause eclypses and new tides. And then--it's gone. Gone to another world (because it's obviously hyperspace capable). And you never, never know when it will come back. The fact that the Rebels were willing to fight something like this is astounding.
I think you’ve said that perfectly. Nothing fits imperial doctrine like the ability to put a metal moon, which is very visible, in orbit of a planet and then melt said planet. It has a far greater affect than any laser rod that’s hidden in the unknown regions, it’s there, ready, and you better behave or it’ll come for you. Also the empire doesn’t need anything more powerful or a giant space factory. They rule over the galaxy, and it’s beneficial to the galaxy that factory worlds can still operate, both for the economy of those planets and taxes. You can’t tax something that you made very easily. Also the empire doesn’t want to turn the whole galaxy into dust. Melting a couple outer rim worlds will scare the important ones enough to get them to behave.
So what I'm reading is that you'd just repeat the mistakes of the Tarkin Doctrine
There are 4 movies demonstrating why this method doesn't work
In fact, it had the opposite effect: once a death star or executor is destroyed, the people they oppressed were no longer scared of the empire and started rebelling
I disagree. In the first movie ("A New Hope") it was destroyed not because its intended use doesn't work, but because Tarken's hubris brought it into an operational environment where it was necessarily ineffectual. The Rebels used hit-and-run tactics; the idea of sending a single vessel against them, even the Death Star, is so mind-bogglingly stupid that were there not historic examples of it the action would ruin suspension of disbelief. A squadron of star destroyers would have defeated the Rebels at Yavin. The Death Star is a STRATEGIC, not a tactical, weapon.
Further, you need time to build the type of horror the Death Star would rely on. There wasn't such time. There's no clear indication of how long it had been operational, but it was clear that this was a new installation from discussions throughout the movie. Had it not been blown up, in ten years, it would have been TERRIFYING to see it in the night sky. Would people rebel? Absolutely. That's what the smaller craft are for. The Death Star is for going against governments, not individuals. THAT is what Tarken got wrong--his hubris had him convinced that such a one-hit-KO weapon rendered other weapons obsolete. This is never true. Weapons systems operate together, even in the Third Systems Warfare model that Star Wars is based on. Superweapons terrify governments, removing huge chunks of resources from rebels and forces opposing you, but you still need fleets to deal with the rest.
As for the Executor, you can't really blame its destruction on poor design. It was a fleet action, and a lot of ships got destroyed. It served its purpose, too--Akbar ordered all fire to be concentrated on it, drawing fire away from everyone else. This left the Imperials free to do whatever they wanted, essentially. And remember, it was effective in "Empire Strikes Back". A Super-class star destroyer is there to be the flagship of a fleet; being blown up in a fleet action means it's doing its job.
@@jamesverhoff1899 interested way to look at things
I would have to pick the Star Forge, it 3D prints fully functional ships and fighters! How is that not the default choice?
Because it’s not really a super weapon. It’s a very advanced factory.
@@deriznohappehquite That's why The Art of War is all about logistics.
Semantics doesn't win war.
As powerful as it is, without a (competent) fleet for it to be constructed in time and the disruptor field is deactivated, it can very well succumb to boardment from some _Hammerhead_ class frigates, much less handle well under pressure from an Imperial-1 class l Star Destroyer (or more powerful ships and super weapons). The Star Forge is fantastic for production, but given the fact it’s powered by the dark side, it would inevitably lead to an empire to fall, just like the Rakatan Infinite Empire)
Eh, a world devastator can do that eventually. You just have to feed it a bit first, so it has a ramp-up time.
Just modify it so that it doesn't have the backdoor and is friendly to you and follows orders. Then find some uninhabited rock or one of those absurdly dense asteroid fields that are all over the Star Wars Galaxy, and have it chow down till it upgrades itself enough to be able to construct capital ships.
Heck, if you bring some First Order engineers aboard, once it is large enough you could install/have the devastator make use of a smaller version of Starkiller Base's tractor system so that it can feed off stars for materials. At which point you then have a mobile star forge that is much better armored and armed.
@@deriznohappehquite Hey, just saying, what about using it to instantly strip the surface of and consume a planet rather than slowly eat away stars? 😏
The star forge is what id choose just imagine if the sepertists used that thing theyd be near unstoppable
Whilst true, remember that the forge had a mind of its own (don't ask me for source cuz I can't remember - search it up)
@@celestialyagg804 i think it influnced the controller because it used the darkside of the force for a powersource i think
@@thundermite1241 Generally correct. It was built by the rakata empire over their home planet of Lehon (rakata, rakata prime.) And purely fed off the darkside of the force itself.
It was eluded too in KOTOR that the star forge is what turned revan to the darkside (SWTOR altered the story flr that.)
While it is controlled by the darkside, im fairly sure it doesnt need much of a crew to run it. Just order it to build what you need & honestly you could probably leave it alone and itll do its job.
Pretty sure KOTOR implied Revan was well on his way to falling by the time the war with the Mandalorians ended.
I would ask the question: "Are super weapons even a good idea from a story telling perspective?"
I remember reading some of the SW commics and whenever the empire pulled out another super weapon I let out a mental groan "oh look, another one. How original and unpredictable..."
Maybe it's the overuse of the trope that sours it for me, but I found it hard to get invested in those story arcs.
The "I now have a super weapon with inpenetrable shields and armour plating, that can eat whole planets! Muahahaha!" -stick always reminds me of a 6-yrs old playing the "my X is more powerfull than yours" game...
I think this is the appeal of the Thrawn stories. An intelligent villain using resources we already understand in novel and clever ways is a much more intriguing story than "I now have a bigger hammer than last time!"
Yes they are. Faulurea of the last battle in TROS demonstrates quite well why superweapons are very useful precisely from the storytellin perspective.
6-year olds, ah yes, the "I have an anti-everything shield!" "Oh yeah? Well I have an anti-anti-everything shield missile!"
It certainly doesn't help that each one tries to top the last one. To quote Spacedock "It's like they think we'll only be invested if the stakes are always at the highest".
I can just imagine all the work into making the star destroyer death star fleet just for a pod of space whales to go through it, destroying half of it
There were quite a few superweapons in SWTOR. The Silencer, the Gauntlet, Hammer Station, Planet Prison, Shock Drum, Death Mark laser, the Desolator, the Shadow Arsenal, Null Cannons, the Eradicators, the Dread Masters, Darth Vitiate, the Zakuulan gods, the Eternal Fleet, the Gravestone, and maybe more. Also the Sun Razer which created the Silencer, the Gauntlet and the Ascendant Spear.
The planet prison has an dread to it that the death star really need. Finding rumble is one thing. Seeing survivors that are doomed to burn while you can do nothing from orbit is another.
Not burn, starve and commit cannibalism. The Planet Prison is designed to keep things in and out of the atmosphere of a planet using an ion barrier, no ships, no supplies. And any ship that tries to get through crashes into the ground.
@@spartantraveler7251 But wasn't it's first target a farm world? I find it hard to believe that starvation will kill them first, especially when the entire sky is on fire....
Though I might be mixing up the names as the one I am thinking of was made from multiple weapons.
The Desolator's first target was a farm world and it destroyed it. The Planet Prison's first target was Coruscant.
I personally always liked the Mass Shadow Generator from KotoR 2.
Honestly, a lot of the super weapons aren’t…great. Death Star is WAY too expensive for too little benefit, The Star Forge still needs a crew to make up its fleet making the unlimited fleet not so unlimited, Centerpoint needs to keep Abeloth at bay, and Suncrusher was the drunken fantasy of Palpatine’s mistress. Galaxy Gun was probably the best, just because it’s an immediate win button against any specific ship or other target.
Didnt the star forge include droids for the ships?
@@xpredator8813
Yes, but the ships aren’t automated. Fully crewed, like Star destroyers.
@@goroakechi6126 one can say that you could build droids to pilot the ships, something like many of CSI ships that had some crew in the form of droids, but even if you can't do that, you can still produce a shit ton of tanks, star fighters, droids, armor and weapons or star destroyers that even if it's nor infinite, you can outnumber your enemys anyways if given time before you lunch a full scale war.
I would say that, for a "conventional" superweapon, the Eclipse is the best. Its beam can probably snipe enemy warships pretty nicely, its armed to the teeth otherwise as well, and it can effectively destroy the habitability of any planet even if it can't just outright blow them up.
For the more unconventional ones, I would go with a World Devastator, assuming I could mod it a bit from the base version (would want it to be livable and loyal to me, and I and whatever compatriots would live on it. It would have no back door shutdown codes, etc).
@@bkane573
And with the resources you could build ten Executors. Infinitely better option.
Here's my potentially off-the-mark view of the World Devastators: They're essentially the same thing as the construction droids that Wedge and the Rogues use in taking Coruscant in the X-Wing books. They go where they're programmed, chew up anything that's in their path at the front side, and then build something new from the back as they move through an area. They even note in the books that they have to turn off the safety systems in order to drive them toward an occupied building.
So....it seems that good ol' Sheeev (that's how we do clone names, right?) just looked out his window, saw construction droid and said "huh....we should make a bigger one of those!"
I second the idea of Palpy just sitting there trying to come up with superweapon after superweapon and doing the thing where you just sort of gaze around the room looking for inspiration before spotting the construction droids.
a very odd take but id take the second death star. if it was finished it wouldve been almost unbeatable unless another superweapon attacked it. it was easy to control and with the millions of storm troopers aboard it could take over any planet( or just destroyed it) no capitol ship could take it down cuz it would just blow it up with its superweapon.
It's not about a single superweapon vs a single ship. In that case, the superweapon is at an advantage. Superweapons are very expensive to build in time and resources, and for the same time and resources, you can build a whole fleet of ships. This whole fleet could have more firepower, is more maneuverable, can be split up to take on several weak enemies at the same time, etc. That is what you should compare the superweapon to.
Having seen three in just the movies alone, they just feel like a maguffin now. Something all the plot revolves around the characters wanting but in the end it doesn't matter.
I like the idea of Centerpoint Station and the technology used to alter orbits, and that the prevalence of hospitable planets has been made possible through this and other terraforming methods
What I think doesn't get enough attention is the Pulsar Station. That should've also been the First Order super weapon. It would've been far more sensible. For those of you unfamiliar, it was a scaled down Death Star, with gravity well projectors along the equator and multiple super-laser ports to fire from, with the intention of using them as anti-ship rather than anti-planet i.e. what the Death Star II was doing at Endor, but on a more economic scale. The lasers could one-shot a Super Star Destroyer. Sadly the plans were just part of an elaborate plot to trap Rogue Squadron and the station was never actually built. Which is a shame since it makes more sense than most of the super weapons.
YES dude! I’ve always thought the Pulsar Station was genius and I would love if it was fully realized eventually!
I once read a fan story where the New New Republic ended up using the phantom energy technology that underpins Starkiller Base and the Xystons to build single-use bombs that were useless in space (shields could stop them) and unable to obliterate planets, but which could devastate continents through chain-reactions with the planetary matter, and it argued that, despite being weaker, these weapons were far superior to the Death Star et al. A superweapon doesn't really NEED to be able to kill planets, so the bombs are powerful enough to do their job. And because they are small, single-use devices, they can be split up among a vast amount of space or secret storehouses, brought out when needed and then delivered by hyperspace-capable bombers. There's no central structure (moveable or otherwise) for an enemy to take out. And there's basically no defense against the bombs except a Scarif-style total-planet shield, which is extremely expensive and inconvenient. The end result is a weapons system that can devastate any conventional planetary power and is basically impossible to take out without a vast amount of excellent intel.
So yes, it's nuclear weapons theory in Star Wars. But why not learn from real-world superweapon doctrine?
So pretty much you just made a nuke cluster bomb? Interesting, but as you said, they are easily stopped by planetary shielding because of being too small yield to penetrate
The Death Star 2 when completed would be the best super weapon because of its mobility, fire power, and versatility. The DS2 could dock ships including star destroyers, so they could refuel or drop off and pick up cargo\personnel. It also could be used simply as a station for various purposes required such as being used as a show of force or used for transportation making it better than the star forge in my opinion because it can simply find the forge and destroy it since the amount of firepower required to defeat it would be immense and the DS2 wouldn’t even need to fight the ships already produced by the forge just destroy it and pick them off the remaining ships and the galaxy gun couldn’t get it because of its mobility.
The Death Star 1 could dock ships including Star Destroyers, we just never saw them do that in the OT. The Star Forge did the same all the time because it produced fleets in the thousands hourly.
The DS2 also loses hard to the Star Forge because an endless fleet of droid or clone crewed Star Destroyers and Death Stars would overwhelm the DS2 before it could get into effective range since the Star Forge also boasts an impressive shield.
That is the thing about the Star Forge, you input any design and it can mass produce it in hours. It is going to be rather hard for the DS2 to be able to use its anti-planetary laser when it has to contend with dozens or more anti-planetary lasers aimed back at it.
I appreciate the ranged superweaponss but I'm more a fan of mobile ones with stronger point defense capabilities. The Death Star for example is self-sufficient by comparison as it is both a weapon and very defensible
I'm going to literally advocate for the devil and purpose that Palpatine himself could actually be considered a "superweapon" 🙃
In legends palp was a superweapon. In canon hes little more than a hero unit in combat after episode 3
So was Nihilus with force drain.
great content as always eck
To be honest, the Dark Force (aka the Katana Fleet) would be interesting as a Super Weapon.
200 Dreadnought Heavy Cruisers, all slaved together - with the Katana herself running the rest. That's a lot of firepower!
I thought they found the Katana Fleet? I swear in the X-wing series book The Bacta War someone mentions that it was recovered by Rebels early on in the rebellion, but all the ships were all outdated and rundown or something.
@@GraveKing3473 In the X-Wing series, Rogue Squadron used false info on the Katana Fleet as a lure to get an ISD2 away from a location they wanted to attack. I think you’re thinking of the Another Chance, the Alderaanian ship which was used to store Clone Wars era weapons (mostly infantry weapons with some heavier weaponry) from Alderaan when they demilitarised. The ship was sent off to cruise around the galaxy until and unless she was called back at any time by the Alderaanian government. The Another Chance was recovered by Alliance aligned forces prior to the Battle of Hoth and supplied a lot of infantry weapons used by the Alliance forces during that engagement.
The Katana Fleet was discovered in the Heir to the Empire trilogy (Dark Force Rising). The Imperial forces commanded by Mitth'raw'nuruodo (Thrawn) took possession of most of the ships and after some very rapid refits Thrawn was able to deploy the Dreadnoughts as squadrons of 6 or so ships to support the Star Destroyers which formed the core of the various task forces in his fleet.
The Katana Fleet was never employed in combat en masse, so the original concept of the ships all operating under direct control of the Katana herself was never used. They were simply somewhat less crew intensive Dreadnought Cruisers when operating like this - rather than 200 ships all operating as 1, all targeting the same point or ship with a sledgehammer blow of turbo laser fire.
I've never been this early before. A surprise to be sure, but a welcomed one!
Take a seat, Skywalker.
great vid, but you missed a vital superweapon. by far the most powerful one, at that.
palpatine's charisma doomed the whole galaxy
Fleet battle between
Grand admiral Thrawn vs. Ender Wiggin
Each one has an equal sized fleet with equally capable subordinates, and since Ender is from a different universe each has equal understanding of the technology they’re using. They are in command of Star Wars vessels. Pick a famous fleet of your choosing I’d suggest death squadron
Ender is a genetically modified person made specifically for space combat.
@@bkane573 ender defeated a whole enemy species with a bunch of old ships.
@@bkane573 a bunch of war torn rust buckets against an enemy which outnumbered them easily 10,000 to 1
If a world devastator could take material from stars like the star forge it would be objectively better then the star forge for the reasons you stated because instead of just devouring stars like the forage you could devour pretty much anything
I think an underrated superweapon is the Gree Dark Matter Device. Probably not the most powerful but it's up there I think
Fundamentally the Star Forge is in the thought-line of the ultimate super weapon. The ability to produce whatever you want, be it ships, troops, or other super weapons from just energy is immensely powerful. Much like the Aeon Paragon Experimental from Supreme Commander Forged Alliance. Once you can generate the resources you need for any project you can just endlessly produce constructor systems to produce even more things in an ever growing construction multiplier.
The reason the Aeon did not get engineer assist structures like the UEF Kennel or Cybran Hive was precisely because once you got enough of those combined with Paragon's ability to match output consumption you could spam out experimental super weapons in seconds. In Star Wars terms... imagine a Death Star being produced every hour. All because your super weapon can build more of itself to enable faster building of yet more super weapons.
The Darksaber gets a mention, but not the Tarkin, (essentially, the Darksaber v1.0, but without the cheaping out- and some additional support structure in place, so the superlaser itself isn't as vulnerable)?
My main question with the Starforge/World Devastators are could they synthesize something as difficult to create as Kyber/Cortosis/Beskar- as in, could they craft superlaser based constructs and be used as high-end "replicator" technology?
I could go on and on and on about how superweapons in scifi are actually underpowered, but that might require a physics lesson.
You gotta keep in mind though: the ability to generate power, is a different matter than your ability to project that power in defensive and offensive manners. The weapons themselves are likely the limiting factor in many cases. You can only pour so much power into them before they start to break.
And yes, magical FTL systems being able to handle the power loads is a contradiction.
If physics come into play, all you need is a tractor beam and some rocks. One novel (if probably unrealistic) use I've seen to glass an entire planet with a single asteroid was in the concept album 'The Parallax II' which ends with the main character using a massive asteroid to nudge the planet's orbit just enough to make sure that it's totally glassed by the sun.
@@SephirothRyu Something something the Last Jedi, something something. But yeah, everything is a weapon in space. Rather, the idea of the weapon "breaking" could work in your favour.
@@EksaStelmere In fairness, settings with powerful gravitic technology can potentially use it both defensively and offensively.
@@SephirothRyu Once you bring in things beyond current science, it's pretty much all hands off. There's already a lot you can do without FTL, so the possibilities get downright cooky.
I love your channel keep up the great stuff
Thanks for the breakdown ❤
Point of interest.
Both the Galaxy Gun and the World Devastators were part of the same series…
Palpatine resurrected was a big fan of insane master weapons, he must have really take the Tarkin doctrine to heart
As a tween I liked the absurdly overpowered, fannon, Imperium-Class Star Destroyer; though, I suppose it couldn't be included because it's not cannon.
My vote is the Star Forge as it feels like the most plausible superweapon. While similar the World Devastators run into the Xystan problem imo in that the power generation to size ratio seems way out of wack compared to the rest of star wars tech. Think about it, a "basic" world devastator is only a few hundred meters at most yet it can strip mine, power its forge and indefinitely generate a shield of such strength that it is effectively invulnerable even against capital and super capital grade weaponry. As a general rule I hate any super weapon that relies on "invulnerability" not as it's main feature but as a reason to generate a convoluted way to destroy it.
That's more or less my problem with the concept as well.
@@GummiArms If memory serves me right that "invulnerability" was more of a case of "we can't get through their shields!" when the New Republic sent a task force to help Mon Calamari and suddenly encountered a massive number of capital ship grade World Devestators. As in the type that can "munch" away star destroyers
The sun crusher was awesome as hell idk understand your hatred for it. Yes it op as hell but that was the point. But in the pragmatic term the darksaber was the most practical supperweapon.
Hey Justin, in my opinion one of the best super weapon is the Silencer laser used by the Sith empire in the SWTOR online game. The thing is described as a "fleet killer" as it could not only one-shoot a capital ship but also fire in rapid succession.
While its power is doesn't hold a candle to the ones you spoke in the video, it does present several advantages: namely that it could be mounted on a capital ship, its reliability, rate of fire and the fact that it could, and it was in fact mass produced.
So I think it would at least deserve a honorable mention.
Very cool seeing the different types of weaponry feature in the comics
The Force is strong in this channel.
Eck i love your videos. I love your narration. Please ALWAYS keep using that sexy voice of yours. It might seem obvious to you but on other lower quality channels they use robot voice narration. Its *almost* as painful as the "romance" dialogues between Anakin and Padme.
Thank you,
Your not so secret admirer and long time subscriber, Lily 🤺
#AskEck What does energy generation look like in Star Wars? How do Coruscant, Naboo, the Death Star, etc. produce their power?
Naboo plasma. Death star big kyber crystals Coruscant imported plasma
Kyber crystals are stated to be able to massively amplify energy. Effectively taking the energy you put into them and somehow multiplying it a lot. Though it could just be that they are a material that is merely capable of HANDLING a huge amount of energy, and that Tibana gas and other methods of projecting energy offensively just have limits to them before feeding more energy into them causes them to explode.
Depends on your source. Some say Star Wars uses fusion as a form of power generation. That may be the case for smaller things, but the Death Stars and Executor class Star Dreadnoughts used hypermatter reactors, which instead of using normal matter as fuel, uses matter from hyperspace for their immense power. The Executor’s reactor put out the same amount of energy as the Sun, which should be completely impossible for something that size short of a neutron star or a black hole. So yeah, different sources, different stories.
@@kingandros4819
The death star didn't use kyber crystals
In most cases it’s nuclear fusion or kaiber crystals
I think the Pulsar Station was shown in the models you were using. The one that looked like a potato shaped asteroid. Whatever that was, it and the Pulsar Station deserve a video I think.
A star wars fic my buddy and I are working on has an imperial successor state with a few ships roving in hyperspace for the duration of their patrols armed with neutronium hyperspace cruise missiles. They can't destroy a planet outright, but they can render the surface to ash, and are roughly analogous to navy SSBNs. I always felt like keeping a (super)weapon in hyperspace until ready to fire would make for a much less vulnerable target, and I wish Star Wars made use of the concept more.
Staying in hyperspace too long seems to carry some pretty substantial risks, though.
Also, I am not sure you can "stand still" in hyperspace, which means they would need to basically be flying around a set known loop of hyperlanes. We don't really know how long ships can stay in hyperspace either, other than that its long enough that they do seemingly have the ability to "skip systems" without leaving it until their destination.
Unless of course an EU book has details on these things.
Man, all that coaxium needed to maintain that much hyperspace! How about a new technological development that allows them to shift in to a pocket dimension with a base?
@@SephirothRyu The faction invests heavily into hyperspace lane cartography, and the cruise missile ships typically are on middle of nowhere lanes, or lanes which have purposefully yet to be published on starcharts.
@@lordzykron5518 We thought about the faction coming up with drives that are very efficient, al la the advent of marine nuclear power in the cold war (with a balancing side of only having that efficiency at low speeds). The whole fic is very much so meant to emulate cold war tensions and have cold war-like combat. For instance the Imperial successor faction makes use of modified, then next gen V-Wings and ARC-170s, armed with things like rotary cannons and a bigger investment into missiles.
@@LyzeOfJ nice
#AskEck is Lord Scourge still alive in Legends, I just finished rereading Revan and was reminded he was made immortal by Vitiate and from what I can tell he survived SWTOR (I have beat the campaign where you kill Vitiate the first time and see no record of his death online). Did his immortality end when Vitiate was killed (for the final time), did he die some time after or is he still alive in the Legends continuity at the farthest point they have gone to.
I would theorize he's still alive and Off in the unknown regions somewhere possibly. If you recall, Sith Alchemy Rituals have a tendency to last a very long time, in the Bane trilogy of books they speak constantly of the well of dark side power that was sealed into the planet but still emanates power and corrupts the landscape 1000 years later.
He lost his immortality. He is dead.
I feel like SWTOR has a bunch of really underrated superweapons. Most of them are re only in act 1 and get destroyed/disabled by the start of act 2 though so most people probably write them off. It makes sense in universe to me because most of them were prototypes and when the factions go to war again by act 3 no one can justify the cost to replace or repair them.
I definitely would rate the star forge as one of my top super weapons. I know you've mentioned before that theoretically it could build anything so why it only built 1 thing many times is unknown, it could be some limitation or perhaps an efficiency thing, in that it's easier to build one thing many times than many different things.
I think even if you take that into consideration you pick an unassuming backbone ship of you fleet rather than the biggest and best ship you have, see if you can modify it to run on skeleton or fully AI crews, then tell the forge to go nuts while you focus your actual production yards on the larger or more specialized units.
Imagine for a moment if the empire keeps producing all the ISD's it can and then they have a star forge supplying them with so many victory cruisers you lose count. Even if the empire skimps a little on their dedicated fighter/anti fighter cover like they tend to do, if there are suddenly 20 victory cruisers in every fleet, presumably with their complements of fighters, you can't just jump in there, take out the ISD and leave, even if you can it doesn't *actually* matter
Why not have the star forge make a second star forge? Then you have 2x production capability.
If I was Palpatine that would've been my first order of business is getting every planet in my empire their own star forge. Maybe multiple, 1 for foods and clothing, 1 for ships and weapons, 1 for Droids to man the ships and defend the planet.
All planets would have a galactic order to send 1/3 of their production capabilities to coruscant, and 3 out of every 5 ships to the core world. That way in time every planet would eventually have their own planetary defense force, and there would be no cap on the ships as they're operated through AI as much as possible, no ship would ever be deemed obsolete and anything that's been in service longer than 20 years and hasn't seen combat will be "retired" to the reserve planets where the excess food and clothing from all over the galaxy would be stored. Frigid planets like Hoth.
@@SeviathTheHumanDrago Well, they still do need resources to operate with, so maybe not quite that many or you run out of habitable worlds. But that's kinda what he did do with the World Devastators, isn't it?
@@Llortnerof Incorrect my friend. The star forge ran on pure force energy. The world devastators were essentially giant recyclers, they just repurposed the materials they absorbed.
@@SeviathTheHumanDrago Then why does every image i could find of it in operation have it draw matter from its star? The Star Forge is _powered_ by the force, but it still needs matter to actually build stuff from. Which, according to all sources i could find, it gets from starlifting.
@@Llortnerof Idk, fan images perhaps? In the game it was stated by both revan and malak that it draws and utilized pure force energy, that's why malak had dozens of captured jedi attached to the thing, he would drain them of their force energy and use it to power the station.
I will never get over that footage of your dog in the end credits 🤣
I have the Dark Empire series but haven't opened those comics since the 90s. But have to say I love the concept of the World Devastators really want to see those on film.
A small Death Star with low powered super lasers for taking out the opposing cap ships would be good. You really don’t need to destroy planets but you do need a good rate of fire.
#askEck Which of the the Star Wars super weapons do you think has the greatest "swords into plowshares" possibilities? I think it is The World Devastator. It can remove navigation hazards, act as a planets main manufacturing or ship yard, fed by asteroids and other space junk, or as the ultimate in space exploration support ship.
People say that the crew requirements make the Star Forge less appealing but I call BS!!! Why not crew my ships with droids? You can put a few organics on each ship to make sure the droids are doing as they're supposed to. That would be sick!
I mean that's basically what the CIS did and they were able to nearly overwhelm the Republic with just traditional industry. Give Dooku the Star Forge and nobody would be able to stop them.
And they say that the star forge is vulnerable from the inside once infiltrated by a strike team... Remember, the star forge can build anything mechanical besides organic meatbags obviously, why not produce and assign formidable droids as your defense? Like droidekas, IG-100 magnaguards, HK-50s(or maybe hk-47s if possible or not at all), B3 ultra-heavy battle droids but they might take some time to build because they're made out of cortosis which is lightsaber-resistant and Phase 3 darktroopers
It's an issue because the Star Forge need a constant supply of people who are trained to use the dark side.
I hope everyone have a blessed day
Thanks!
So… what do people get wrong about super weapons, again?
All this video was, was a “my favorite/what I think are the best superweapons” list.
I would love to see you do a video on the DP20 Frigate. It seems to be missing from your video library.
My favorite is the Star Forge. I don't know if it's the most powerful but if left to its own devices for long enough it will create a fleet of ships and an army of droids that would dwarf any that ever existed in the Star Wars universe. And that's just the factory part of it. Revan and Malek never did unlock all of its abilities though it is implied that Revan knew about some of them.
Damn, that's a nightmare scenario right there. Dark Empire meets I, Robot.
I like the star forge , if you wait you can build a crazy fleet that dwarfs the empire with droids and ships
The mini ship portable Death Star lasers are probably the BEST from a warfare perspective overall. You can basically put them on even Minor capital ships and have a mobile, defensible mini superweapon. Equally adapt at taking out planets an moons at full power, or huge enemy ships an stations at medium to low powers and even at the weakest settings you basically utterly destroy enemy cities, bases or any sorta ship/unit that gets in the way or is targeted. Which while perhaps causing large scale damage to a planet would still probably leave alot MORE then a deveststor or full size Death Star shot would do from what we've seen
Again, a devastator can make exactly that ✨ and more!!! ✨
That they are not very mobile. Cost too much. And don’t invest in protecting it.
OG Death Star!
Got to use in Empire at War.
Would be interesting to see someone well-equipped try to take it on without the direct strike to the core.
One of the things that disappointed the most in the last batch of SW movies is the easiness on how the epic Death Star was matched/surpassed, it was supposed that such super weapon battle station was the pinnacle of a whole Galactic Empire, and a such, massive effort was put to build it, in the last movies, where then a simple sized Star Destroyer has the same level of firepower to destroy an entire planet with a single shot, then an entire fleet of such destroyers in Exegol, and also the Starkiller Base, where the level of destruction and size simply gets out of the scale, is pure nonsense, it is also totally unbalanced the vastness of such structures and how relatively easy to destroy, it makes the whole plot weird and very difficult to swallow.
In contrast, what the SW saga did great was the second Death Star in the Return of the Jedi, with the simple fact of an unfinished one, that perfectly depicts the limits of the empire, I mean, hey, they can build a moon sized super weapon but it requires a reasonable amount of time an resources and it has its limitations.
You should take a look at Pente Patrol Star Wars. He creates amazing star wars what-ifs. Love your content.
The Celestial Aurory(?). Which is an intractable map of the galaxy. Snuff out a star and watch it supernove irl. :D
Necron tech is extremely fun.
Reckon centre point station and the galaxy gun would make a pretty good sword an shield combo.
A pretty obscure one that I think is subtly terrifying is the Hyperspace Nullifier. It doesn't *have* much destructive potential, but as the name implies it's able to control hyperspace travel. Imagine an interdictor field/generator that could simply shut off all hyperspace travel to any system in the galaxy at any time without actually being there. If memory serves it was never activated in the book it appeared in (Honor Among Thieves) but it was essentially described as a world hollowed out by the nullifier's creators and supported entirely by the device.
Beyond that, anything made by the Celestials probably counts: the Cosmic Turbine that could annihilate an entire system, Centerpoint Station as stated, maybe the Tho Yor (the ships that brought Force-Sensitives to Tython and allowed the Je'daii to repel a Rakatan invasion force)
Super weapons are kind of dumb, storywise. It’s just a way to give massive stakes to a story with a few characters.
The issue there is it fails at this, because blowing up a random planet we don’t care about doesn’t actually do anything for the audience. The stakes are high in-universe but it’s impersonal to the audience. It’s like reading about some Chinese civil war where 30 million people died 6000 years ago.
You have to make people care about the thing that’s at stake. Often smaller stakes can work better.
The Book of Boba Fett is a good recent example of how smaller stakes can still make for a compelling story.
I think the biggest mistake from the original movies here is the limits of how many planet sets they can make, so we never care about Alderaan or the rebel ships getting blown up. JJ's movies have no such excuse
I dont remember the name but in a series i used to read, there were two titanic superweapons that sound perfect to me
The two dyson spheres were named prosperitybringer and peacebringer. Capable of superluminal travel (but at a limited speed unlike smaller ships), these behemoths harnessing the powers of a stable supernova and trinary yellow stars respectively were actually primarily trade hubs.
There was a publicly available itinerary where blue denoted trade-focused visits and orange (iirc) denoted intent to do superweapon things. Due to their slow jump-speed, a planet or star system would be aware months in advance before they arrived and most chose to surrender ~1-2 weeks after they got the notice
And the author actually made it believable that they were actually bringing in a profit for the "tel'tee existance" that ran them due to 3 things:
1. the fees from traders being enough to cover upkeep
2. basically all movement being free aside from the original construction cost thanks to the slower ftl being powered by the star instead of exotic materials like the insta-jump variant
3. The existance had dibs on any survivors (i.e. slaves) of an attack and could sell scavenging rights to the traders for whatever material was not needed to expand or repair the station (with hints that peacebringer once only had a single star in it).
Also, a World Devastor would also be extremely useful outside of a weapon if you cut down the level of autonomy. Imagine having a ring of world devastors in every system, turning dirt into everything you would ever have wanted. Scarcity and resource conflicts would largely become a thing of the past, a galaxy where everyone could truly live like a king.
So glad the World devastator is finally getting recognition.
Playing Battletech, I often wondered how many tanks you could build with the materials required for these mechs.
How many Star Destroyers could you build instead of either Death Star?
Not to mention that blowing up planets is more likely to fan the flames of rebellion than squash it.
I have always wondered why they didn't just build a major capital ship killing weapon along the main spine of an ISD; seriously just make an ISD from a carrier to a Capital-Ship killing gunship. If you mounted a major gun down the length of a majority of that ship, it would be enough to one-shot just about anything.
Then mount double turbo-laser Turrets, and rapid fire heavy laser cannons for anti-smaller ship weapon systems.
Have a couple in any given fleet group, and you'd have a weapon that would force your opponents into charging your major ISD Gunships. If they didn't their major ships would just get nuked early in the battle.
My favorite is the DarkSaber.... Because you dont have to be afraid of it :)
The Galaxy Gun confuses me. Why do you need to shoot the torpedo from a gun? Can't the torpedoes go into hyperspace from a standstill? Like a normal ship?
I think the "gun" in its name is just to sound cool. It's probably more of a huge portable magazine full of torpedoes, that happens to be shaped kind of like a gun.
I would contend that the torpedoes wouldn't work from a regular ship because they need a massive generator to charge them with the massive amounts of energy needed to destroy their targets. They can then store that energy and use it for their flight, but not generate it independently.
i'd go with the World Devastator. who *wouldn't* want an STC (Standard Template Construct from Warhammer 40k) that can build anything you put into its data banks, but it can make them better as well? all it *really* needs to be the perfect factory is the Horizon Zero Dawn upgrade: it would only need light and memory to build whatever you tell it to, no matter how small or large it was.
Yeah, I would say that World Devastators are the best Star Wars superweapon, and they're a really cool threat, too.
the concept of the Darksaber reminds me of the Tarken from Star Wars marvel comic ,
Deathstars could be really effective if implemented correctly. If every sector of the galaxy had a deathstar then the empire would essentially be unstoppable. Not only would it essentially be an imperial capital for the region, it would also make it an immediate threat for any planet since it could attack world extremely fast. It would also be harder to destroy to stations since there were so many that the alliance would need to pull risky assaults to destroy each one. The stations could also protect eachother because if one gets attacked then each station can threaten to destroy a planet in their respective regions. The stations themselves would also likely be heavily defended since they now serve as an imperial seat of power instead of a special military project. There could also be cool story elements to this idea such as the core being the only area without a death star because that way they can't be used to destroy coruscant and take over the galaxy
personally I think I'm going to be a fan of Darksabr and Galaxy gun since those are the smaller cheaper systems you can expect multiple ones within some kind of reason.
The world eaters, and well, generally just even biggerer and in some cases quasi invincible threats tend to me simply checking out.
I agree 100% with the World Devastors and Star Forge. I would add a couple of cotingencies to the kill switch though. Make it so you can target specific WDs before they get too dangerous, and have multiple kill switch codes (each of which can do the job on their own) that can be scrambled anytime (or constantly) to counter the risk of the WDs disabling the switch.
Nah, just not trying to make your biggest enemy your appretice while giving him access to the kill switch should be sufficient :D
What people get wrong is that they think they're useful. Ought to stop making them and use the resources for the TIE Defender program #ThrawnGang
I prefer the superweapon a friend of mine was playing with for a fanfic. Take a Death Star. Give it the World Devastator's molecular furnaces and some ship-building capabilities. Blow up planets and built fleets from the debris. The weakness of the beast is that it takes a while to convert ALL of a planet's mass into ships, so it often stays in one localized area.
Honestly the Star Forge is the best. Hell even after destruction it began to rebuild itself.
Eh, a world devastator could potentially do that too. You just have to grow it enough and install some of that tractor tech that Starkiller base used to draw in matter from the star and it basically would become a mobile version of the Star Forge with better defenses and offenses.
I agree that the darksaber was one of best theoretical idea. Death stars were too costly, and aren't what the empire needed anyway (it needed to spread its presence out to prevent rebels from concentrating, it wasn't fighting traditional planets), and it could have darksabers faster and cheaper and deploy them to system fleets faster. Just give them whatever they need for shielding and propulsion and have them rely on escort fleets to do regular fighting in order to keep costs under control. This would also make the sting of losing one a lot less painful, since they now cost something closer to an Executor (another wasted idea, it doesn't really do anything special a star destroyer can't but with more lasers) rather than the megasink of resources and money that a death star platform costs.
Centerpoint's ability to essentially strike anywhere in the galaxy with its black hole generator was one "all in" weapon I could get behind, especially if you had mounted *that* onto a death star or something and have it move around repeatedly in order to evade detection. The power to lock out hyperspace across an entire system is a great way to prevent enemies from attacking until such time as it could call reinforcements from the rest of the empire to assist it with whoever the attacker is (while centerpoint itself then escapes after lowering the field, or if the reinforcements are sufficient prevent the attackers from escaping).
The Xysten were another good idea (probably the only one in disney canon) in that lots of medium-heavy ships are what the empire actually needed, with longer range weapons (engaging with laser beams is in practical terms ridiculous for the same reason that battleships are obsolete). They're a better idea than the eclipse style superships that are just too big and expensive for what the empire actually needs, and represent a genuine advance in terms of miniaturization and mass production.
But of course the ultimate weapon is the star forge. The ability to mass produce ships of almost any size and on such a scale and at such a speed makes it the pinnacle of industrialized warfare. This also has good synergy with what fleet compositions need more of, and what real life is moving towards: mass produced cheaper fighters/bombers controlled by remote pilots and eventually AI. This cuts the cost of losing experienced pilots to basically 0 since the pilot is not personally in danger, and you no longer need pilots who are in perfect physical fitness and within a certain height etc. A fat nerd with glasses can pilot a drone just fine with some practice. In star wars AI is sufficiently advanced to program reasonably advanced battle maneuvers, and put them under the control of a few key sentients operating at the fleet level, who make major decisions and supervise the AI. Individual starfighters wouldn't have the same level of skill and sophistication, but they don't need it since they're so easily replaced (even without the star forge, with the star forge it becomes this unstoppable onslaught), since they're essentially just a weapons platform that flies, and has things like life support and cockpits etc stripped out to economize space and resources.
I've actually warmed up to the idea of Starkiller base, after JFO shows us illum in the process of being hollowed out (and much later becoming SKB) I think that's a great limiter. Having it only be possibly on the planet that is known for being the source of 90% of lightsaber crystals makes some sense (almost like it should have been mentioned in the movie). if I keep in mind that this is the same franchise that already gave us two deathstars (plus everything from legends) then by star wars logic my only grievance is that we really should have seen more of the new republic before it got axed.
There's also interesting stoy potential of future Jedi figuring out where to get new kyber crystals without illum as an option.
I think the World Devastators were only invulnerable because no one had any powerful weapons. As long as it was cheap and could kill a Star Destroyer, that was good enough. That's especially true with the Republics constant attempts to get the galaxy to disarm.
If armatures care about tactic and professionals care about logistics. The super weapons that augment your logistical capabilities are the best choice.
Planet killing weapons seem like an intensive use of resources that become an automatic priority target for adversaries.
So, a skimmed superweapon which I'd actually get to, is the Tarkin. It was built after episode 4 but before episode. Basically a superlaser with a few auxilary weapons, Same power, but only was defeated by a rewire. And yeah, had barrier shielding like death star 2.
Gotta love Star Wars and it's choice of superweapons to choose from 😆
I like the idea of The Sun Razor kind of like if World Devestators and the Star Forge had a baby. Not really sure why so many superweapons are factories (LOTR crossover?) but still nice.
The Tarkin would have to my favorite though. Then again any one of the missile platforms would be practical except the Sun Crusher it may not deserve the hate it gets but neither does it need praise.
World Devastator representation~
Mobile yards of construction and devastation all fitted together in a relatively compact form. Perhaps less efficient than the Star Forge in sone ways, but at least it’s not a nexus of Dark Side energy actively feeding on it‘s user and their society. It may not be able to create force enhanced tech… but it’s still potent.
Is the Star Forge truly worth the risk?
That was Malak’s choice. What would Revan choose?
Oh well pick your favorites regardless of logic. ^^
I quite enjoy Thrawns view of the Death Star. Tie Defender would have crushed the rebellion for sure.
Shawkin device. Easy.
Imagine being able to hold literally the entire Galaxy hostage.
My preference is the Star Forge. If properly hidden, you could use it to win any war through attrition. The corruption inherrant to its use kinda sucks, but if you are okay using it at all, that's probably not a big worry. If the Star Forge was used with an "eternal empire/cis" approach where organics were rare, you would be pretty unstoppable.
great!
Have to say that depends what you are planning to use the superweapon for as to which is the best; Centrepoint station is perfect superweapon to allow you to take over, control and cut off a system from rest of the galaxy and maker it your own. While world devastators are perfect tool to churn out massive military force and then use it to conquer anywhere you want in the star wars galaxy or destroy your enemeis on mass with no chance for you to be stopped by them.
I'd prefer to ditch any superweapons projects and redirect all the resources to building new capital ships and developing advanced fighters for them, a lot of resources would also go to Intelligence and Special Operations services. That gives the enemy a lot of targets instead of a giant bullseye that Death Star was, and an entire fleet gathered in one place looks just as intimidating as any superweapon. It's combined firepower could also match, I guess. Oh, and AT-AT's go to scrap, I want AT-TE's back, albeit with some modifications (covered main gun operator cabin, for start, that poor guy was a perfect target for enemy snipers).
Star forges and world devastators allow you to do all of that at a fraction of the long-term cost. You could literally build anything you want, including advanced fighters and capital ships, by literally feeding it trash from what I can tell, and no one would suspect a thing if you kept it secret because you could disguise it as a massive sanitation project.
I'd go for the star forge as well. I feel like the minor cons don't outweigh the pros. You control the output.
Of the 2 you named Center Point station was the better weapon but you needed the skilled and right people to run it like the Blackstone fortress in 40K. Honestly the starforge would be a better option for the Empire as it could keep producing small ships and escorts to support the Star Destroyers while the other Super weapons like the Deathstar and super stardestroyers where built.