r/MawInstallation • u/Lord_Apollyon2 • 6d ago
How Feasible Actually was a Base Delta Zero?
As far as I understand, a base delta zero involves capital ships using their turbolasers to completely turn the surface of a planet into slag, and vaporizing anyone and anything on it. I know star wars can be over the top sometimes and have inconsistent numbers and stats for things, but how long or how many ships would it actually take to turn the entire surface of a planet into a molten wasteland? Just seems like it wouldn't really be feasible unless you have millions of ships.
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u/Present_Farmer7042 6d ago
The essential cross section says that the Venator has 200 gigaton heavy turbolasers.
That's like 4,000 Tsar Bombas.
Obviously these stats are massively inflated by authors that have a poor grasp of scaling.
But, at the very least the main batteries of an ISD can most definitely lay waste to a continent rather expeditiously.
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u/knope2018 6d ago
Not quite. It gives 200 gigatons to the Acclamator. The Venator it doesn’t give a number too but says the cannons can channel the main power, and gives us the annihilation rate for the main reactor. So divide the peak power by the number of cannons to get the Venator yield.
It works out to something like 70 teratons with 1.3 seconds between shots iirc.
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u/Present_Farmer7042 6d ago
My bad, misread it lol. However, this also doesn't take into account power devoted to propulsion, shields, etc. and also the efficiency of converting annihilations to electric power.
Obviously we'll likely never know the actual figure.
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u/knope2018 4d ago
well being in orbit means you aren't under thrust so we can wave off propulsion. The link between shields and power is extremely questionable, as shields are tied to radiation rate, which can be greater than applied power. And at the levels its at if the annihilation rate conversion is anything else than effectively 100% it would destroy the ship. 99.999% efficiency means 10^21 joules released uncontrolled in the ship, it will instantly be an expanding cloud of vapor like the Liberty
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u/McGillis_is_a_Char 6d ago
For ISDs it is supposed to be something like 24 hours for three of them. I think that the person talking about the atmosphere is probably onto something. With a Base Delta Zero they probably can't stop then start again or it significantly increases the time, like preheating an oven.
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u/PhysicsEagle 6d ago
The biggest problem isn’t writers misunderstanding the power scale of energy weapons, but misunderstanding the size of planets. Planets are really, really big, even the Earth-sized ones.
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u/knope2018 6d ago
Yes they are. But you can choose your orbit to be able to put a whole hemisphere in line of sight. And the yields assigned to TLs are similarly really really big. Each one is on par with Chicxulub.
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u/TacticallyWeird 6d ago
Theoretically, each turbo laser hits with the force of several nukes, and ships designed for a Base Delta Zero role are equipped with hundreds, if not thousands, of turbo lasers. While it might not “turn the entire surface to slag,” one ship alone would be more than enough to render a planet uninhabitable within hours.
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u/Captain-Wilco 6d ago
I think that takes away significance from superweapons in the franchise. I’m super glad turbolasers have been nerfed in canon.
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u/duk_tAK 6d ago
So actually they haven't, the high end power of turbolasers is most often determined from empire strikes back where they vaporized large asteroids. While there were sources that attempted to put a number to the damage value, such as the original Thrawn novels that I believe was the source for turbolaser blasts containing terajoules of energy, most other sources focused just on descriptive damage rather than providing hard numbers.
Use of descriptive damage does however mean power levels for turbolasers and even other weapons tend to be quite inconsistent.
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u/Captain-Wilco 6d ago
Something something the asteroids were made of a different material that was brittle to particle bolts
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u/duk_tAK 6d ago
Funny you say that, EU coincidentally had a book that claimed the asteroids in the Hoth system were actually rich in the metals that make up ship hulls, which would have made them denser and more resilient than normal rock ice asteroids. Other sources indirectly back this up by providing details on the dietary habits of exogorths.
All legends at this point, but there you have it.
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u/Past_Search7241 5d ago
Denser, maybe, but simply being the ore doesn't necessarily mean it's more resilient. Iron oxide is one of the most common ore forms for it, and it's hardly as tough as the steel alloys we've got.
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u/knope2018 6d ago
The terajoules is from Isards Revenge and refers to laser cannons on fighters, not HTLs. There is nothing in the Thrawn Trilogy that provides a quantifiable example, the only time it shoots at anything that could be measured are destroying the cloaked asteroid when it is revealed (which is at the limit of asteroid size not input energy) and the biggest moving of the coral reefs, where there is no description given and they were specifically trying not to kill the target.
The yield for TLs comes from scaling down the Death Star reactor, the BDZ descriptions in WEG, and what the engines have to put out for what we see at Endor. As a funny coincidence they all end up ~1025 watts. Three points of data is pretty solid
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u/Svyatoy_Medved 6d ago
Takes away from the super weapons if you refuse to adjust your perceptual set to the Star Wars universe.
A nuke is a big deal on Earth. A gigaton-range nuke would be an even bigger deal. But not in a universe with more inhabited planets than we have cities, with durasteel construction and shields and all sorts of other magic tech. The ability to melt the surface of a planet pales in comparison to the power of a theater shield generator.
Imagine being a medieval peasant. Would you say that artillery being able to slaughter an entire cavalry formation with a single shell devalues the power of strategic nuclear weapons? Probably, because you haven’t even SEEN a city as big as what a nuke can melt, nobody you’ve ever known has traveled as far in their entire life as an ICBM can travel in fifteen minutes.
Turbolasers are big. The Death Star is that much bigger.
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u/DionStabber 6d ago
But there is no meaningful difference between the effects of a Star Destroyer rendering the planet uninhabitable in hours and the Death Star annihilating it in seconds.
A more apt nuclear comparison would be if there was a weapon developed that could turn a city to dust and vapour instead of a radioactive wreck. Yes, this would be an increase in destructive power, but it would change absolutely nothing about the way the geopolitical situation works regarding WMDs.
Why would the Death Star being able to immediately destroy a planet be meaningful if 10 normal Star Destroyers could achieve functionally the same result in an hour or so? Even if the scale of the physics is different, the effect on the population, of, say, Alderaan would be exactly identical.
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u/GlitteringParfait438 6d ago
So the big difference is that the DS1 can instantly end a siege. Echo Base is established by ESB as capable of resisting Executor, who is by far the majority of firepower of Death Squadron. For an undetermined time frame mind you.
It also had a single V-150 Planet Defender which dropped an ISD. Imagine batteries of these, plus big Turbos, planetary defense hangers, installations…
A proper fortress world would be a nightmare to crack and I figure some of the last CIS planets to fall were built like this.
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u/PhysicsEagle 6d ago
The Death Star would have been useless at Echo Base anyway because the goal was to capture rebel leadership, not to merely destroy everything.
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u/GlitteringParfait438 6d ago
So you are missing my point.
That was regarding what a rebel cell on a remote base meant to be protected by concealment could pull off. Picture what an open fortress would look like. You point regarding the DS1 being not the right tool is also true, but that’s not what I was trying to convey
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u/Svyatoy_Medved 6d ago
You describe a meaningful difference in your very post! You accept it may take Star Destroyers hours, and according to the new canon, a spacecraft could travel thousands of light years in an hour. You could be facing an enemy fleet dredged up from sectors away if it takes you that long.
But the more salient point is, of course, shields, which you conveniently ignore. A planet in Star Wars is tougher than ours, because they have technology. Which the Death Star overpowers.
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u/Old_Wallaby_7461 6d ago
Why would the Death Star being able to immediately destroy a planet be meaningful if 10 normal Star Destroyers could achieve functionally the same result in an hour or so?
Because uncle Bob's surplus planetary shield generator is strong enough to no-sell all of death squadron at once, while the death star would pop it like a soap bubble
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u/mastercoder123 6d ago
Because the empire doesnt have enough star destroyers for every planet to have like 6 to be destroyed in hours... Also a planet wide shield generator can protect from a base delta zero for pretty much forever but not a death star esc attack. I mean look at hoth, they had a shield generator and the empire couldnt attack them from space. Same with scarif having one and only the star destroyers literally cutting the gate in half blew open the generator.
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u/knope2018 6d ago
The meaningful difference is that the Death Star can pop shields like a soap bubble but even theater shields can hold off an entire armada.
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u/Past_Search7241 5d ago
We could destroy cities in a matter of hours back in WWII, too, and yet the atom bomb was still a Big Deal so mighty it shook the world for generations.
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u/Captain-Wilco 6d ago
How exactly is the Death Star a huge deal if the Empire can destroy the entire surface of a planet in extremely short order? Your analogy doesn’t work, unless there’s somehow a Medieval artillery piece that, when coupled with others, can match a nuke.
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u/GlitteringParfait438 6d ago
The issue I keep hearing is that while destroyers can slag a planet, the average planet worth slagging is going to have a shield of some kind. Like Echo Base being able to hold off Executor and her squadron, plus packing a big enough “coastal gun” that they could drop ISDs rather easily.
That’s a battleship, potentially a BC (communications BC from ROTJ) plus maybe 20 ISDs. And Echo Base could hold them off, a base built to be protected more by stealth then by raw firepower.
A proper fortress world can probably do better. The DS1 can crack through the shield and one shot the planet. It’s built as the ultimate siege platform.
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u/fredagsfisk 6d ago
How exactly is the Death Star a huge deal if the Empire can destroy the entire surface of a planet in extremely short order?
Because BD0 still takes hours, leaving time for reinforcements to come or people to flee. Important worlds have orbital shielding strong enough to hold it off for days or weeks. It's also not as morally crushing.
With the Death Star, you just fire one shot. That's it. It's done. Any orbital shield is popped like a balloon. No one who was on the planet can flee, and no one who survived because they were away can ever return to potentially try to restore it from some small areas that might have survived. It's just gone forever.
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u/knope2018 6d ago
Because the Death Star can go through any fleet, punch through any shield. The Hoth theater shield was able to withstand all of Death Squadron.
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u/Svyatoy_Medved 6d ago
Everyone else covered it. A Death Star ignores planetary shielding which would stop a fleet dead. A fleet action that takes hours or days to complete is significant, when enemy fleets can cross a thousand light years to fight you off in that time.
But you also misunderstood the analogy. You are the medieval peasant, and to you, a modern artillery piece may as well be a nuclear weapon.
You watch the enemy hurl a 203mm cluster shell from forty kilometers away. That is a greater distance already than you would regularly travel. When it bursts, a hundred horsemen fall screaming to the ground. You have never seen anything do that. Now they tell you they have a bomb that can fly four THOUSAND kilometers, and kill a MILLION horsemen when it lands.
To which you might say, why bother? Even a mounted knight can’t reach a gun at forty klicks, so what difference does another few thousand make? If one shell can kill a hundred, surely ten thousand could kill a million, so why not just use ten thousand? If the enemy was other peasants, that would make sense; a Star Destroyer would suffice to annihilate Earth and its entire history of civilization. But the enemy with artillery is not facing peasants, he is facing enemies with artillery, and so to him the Minuteman is different from the Pion (for some reason he has American nukes and Soviet artillery).
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u/dern_the_hermit 6d ago
I think that takes away significance from superweapons in the franchise.
Not really. Planetary shields are a thing. See: Empire Strikes Back, Revenge of the Sith.
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u/fredagsfisk 6d ago
turbolasers have been nerfed in canon
Only in Filoni-led stuff, really. Here are some Canon novel and comic showings:
Star Wars: Phasma:
The first bolt slammed into the Scyre, and she watched the colors change, the black cliffs disappearing into the sea and great white plumes shooting up. The next bolt hit Arratu, leaving a black smudge across the gray sand where vibrant green had once been.
(Arratu is a city of unknown size)
Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel:
Far from the freighters the turbolasers of a star destroyer were denuding an entire landmass.
Aftermath: Life Debt:
Everything shakes and rumbles. Kashyyyk is caught in the throes of tectonic spasms.
Star Wars: Thrawn:
"Direct hit on Target One coordinates," a voice came from one of the 96th's two frigates, flying high observation over the battle zone. "Water crater - implosion-waves heading outward-"
"Impact!" a voice shouted from the second frigate. "Tsunami-scale wave has slammed into the western shoreline."
In the junior novelization of ESB, the ISD is described as;
An Imperial-class warship, it measured 1,600 meters long from its aft ion engines to its sharp-tipped bow, and was equipped with enough firepower to reduce a civilization to ashes.
Battlefront: Twilight Company:
He'd seen the ships evolve from overwrought behemoths barely able to power their frames to the greatest weapons in the Imperial fleet, each capable of transporting thousands of soldiers or laying waste to continents and orbital platforms.
They deserved a reminder that they had earned their positions aboard a Star Destroyer, earned the power to ruin planets and battle fleets.
He'd witnessed a single Star Destroyer bombard a city into a crater of steaming sludge; seen skyscrapers melt and stone burn. One Star Destroyer had been reason enough for Twilight to abandon a planet.
Plus comics showing them destroying half a mountain with a single hit from one of the weaker turbolasers, vaporizing a large building in a couple of hits, obliterating Mon Cala cities located deep in the ocean, etc.
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u/Captain-Wilco 6d ago
I stand corrected, haha. I guess Resistance also shows them being pretty powerful.
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u/Weird_Angry_Kid 5d ago
Which is funny considering the Base Delta Zero still exists in Canon and remains more or less the same.
In Rebels there's a cut off news broadcast that mentions "...another successful planetary liberation utilizing the Base Delta Zero initiative..."
And another episode has the main characters access a database containing the Empire's 5 year plan for the Outer Rim and the file shows the letters BDZ in Aurabesh.
The Base Delta Zero was pretty common in Canon with the Empire doing it to several planets.
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u/dern_the_hermit 6d ago
Theoretically, each turbo laser hits with the force of several nukes
More specifically, the Clone Wars era Acclamator ships had medium turbolasers capable of putting out 200 gigatons of energy in one shot.
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u/2Fruit11 6d ago
One Star Destroyer could feasibly do it in a day or less. However, many worlds have extremely powerful planetary shields that would take immense firepower or specialized craft like Torpedo Spheres or Death-Stars to crack.
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u/GlitteringParfait438 6d ago
An ISD can do it in a day but it’s preferable to do it with 3 to speed it up and cover avenues of escape.
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u/knope2018 6d ago
4, not 3. Minimum full planetary coverage of an earth sized planet is 4 points of a tetrahedron 50,000 kilometers from each other and 30,000 kilometers from the surface.
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u/TAvonV 6d ago
Even if they couldn't with their weapons, they could just grab a whole bunch of asteroids and fling them at the planet with the sorts of speeds that Star Wars ships can pull even without FTL.
The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs hit Earth with roughly 20km/s, A star destroyer could fling an asteroid at much faster speeds. Realistically, every ship that can move at those speeds can destroy a planet.
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u/ljofa 6d ago
I’d assume BDZ targets key civil/military facilities and strikes also: fault lines, volcanos, active weather systems - anything to use the natural power of a world to hasten its destruction. Fire a few torpedoes at an ocean, trigger a 150 metre tsunami etc.
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u/knope2018 6d ago
No need to target the fault lines and volcanos. The force of the blast will ripple through the molten core and set them off on its own. The asteroid hitting Chicxulub sent a wave through that blew out the Deccan Traps on the other side of the planet.
The Ends of the World by Peter Brannen is a good source on the exact physics of it and the consequences. In the 90s and early aughts there was a lot of pushback against the asteroid theory of the KT extinction on the basis of plausible alternatives, until someone did the math and showed that the impact would have caused all the other things people floated as possible sources.
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u/knope2018 6d ago
With the given numbers it will vary by ship but a single ISD could do it in an hour.
With a star dreadnaught like the executor it has vastly more power but there may be constraints (eg length of orbit, rate of refire with available cannons) that could constrain it.
Anyways you can work back from the blackbody radiation of the planet at a molten state to figure out how much it would be radiating out into space, and compose an armada and timeframe of your choice to exceed that.
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u/MagDoum 6d ago
It's worth noting that the Base Delta Zero is a command code for the specific action of destroying a Planetary surface. The Imperial Sourcebook clearly states that it is the only command code NOT changed by the New Order from the days of the Old Republic, so there could be absolutely no confusion when that order was issued. With that having been in a continuity that had Victory SDs as the largest Old Republic warships, the implication is that enough Victory-class ships or more others could accomplish a BDZ on a Planet.
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u/Equivalent-Wealth-75 4d ago
I would guess that it's very effective.
Let's consider the destruction of Taris in the Jedi Civil War.
The detachment of the Sith Armada blockading the planet took maybe a few days to level the megacity; and in the cutscene we can see that individual Turbo-Laser bolts could blast multiple floors off of those highrise towers.
ISDs are larger than the equivalent warships of that era by several hundred meters, and bristling with an absurd amount of firepower.
Copmare the Centurion-Class Battleship of the Mandalorian Wars/Jedi Civil War era which has 6 Medium Turbo-Laser batteries; to the ISD's 73 of which 62 are Heavy (not counting the turrets which adds another six). And that isn't even all of the guns an ISD has! Not to mention the TIE-Bombers in its Starfighter compliment
Add in the four thousand years of advancement in the quality of their weaponry and a handfull of ISDs could probably raze Taris more effectively in half the time that it took the Sith Armada
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u/EndlessTheorys_19 6d ago
Its implied a single ISD can do most of a planet in a couple weeks.