How to Build the Deathstar

The Galaxy is vast with many beings to manage. If you have a Galactic Empire, you’ll need a powerful superweapon to keep the territories you control in check and gain the upper hand in campaigns against insurrection. Here’s how to build the Deathstar superweapon.

These instructions are very challenging. You may never know if your weapon is going to have weaknesses to be exploited and ruin your expensive project.

You will need a Galactic Empire to acquire resources such as material and slave construction labor. A Project Manager is needed who is technically knowledgeable on the weapon's engineering design. It also helps to have an Enforcer who can “Force” the slave labor to do the bidding of the Empire.

Calculate the energy required to be generated to destroy an average sized planet. In general, no gas giant planets should be included in the calculations unless the power to destroy that type of planet can be created. Weapons and hyperdrive will be the biggest power draws. Everything else is secondary.

Plan for requirements that will not make the weapon wimpy. Since the weapon will be used to destroy planets, do not water down the requirements. If the power plant only has enough energy to lay waste countries or even cities, then cancel the Deathstar program until planet annihilation technology is feasible.

Make the superweapon easy to operate. The customer of the Deathstar weapon will just want to say “fire when ready, commander” to make the weapon do its thing. If the Deathstar requires more complex procedures like drilling a hole into a planet and pushing a bomb down the planet, well that could take too long. A procedure like that could be easily vulnerable to special operations attacks.

Design the hypermatter reactor around your calculations. Assume the target is about the size of Earth, the Deathstar must be capable of drawing enough charge for total planet destruction. If this power can be maintained full time, that will be even better.

Consider additional power needed for the station’s sublight and faster than light engines. They must be reliable for short tactical maneuvers and long distance travel from one side of the galaxy to the other.

Take into account power for gravitational fields. A massive crew will be required full time to maintain and operate the superweapon. They will need to have an environment that is comfortable all the time.

Add controls to the Deathstar to make the weapon accurate enough to target capital ships. You never know when the rebel scums are blatant enough to use such ships on your superweapon.

Provide a tractor beam as an added feature. Rather than destroying ships, the superweapon might be able to collect real cool hotrod spacecrafts. Just be sure to have redundant controls just in case someone disables the tractor beam.

Design the station to house a full complement of an Imperial Army and Navy to invade other territories or planets in the event that total destruction is not necessary. Allow the station to accept massive military weapons such as capital warships or large 4 legged ground vehicles.

Include amenities for the crew to endure the very long deployments at the station. Add amusement parks with the biggest and fastest roller coasters, supermalls, movie theaters, recreational parks, nightclubs, bars (especially nudie ones), and warehouses to stock plenty of spirits.

Determine what could threaten the battle station no matter how remote that could be. Include the solution into the design immediately and not wait later. You never know if some foe can make a one in a million shot down a 2 meter by 2 meter sized exhaust port and into your power plant.

Conduct military drills often to prepare for desperate attacks that could penetrate defenses. Learn to eliminate threats quickly.

Test the weapon on planets with no intelligent living beings. You just want to scare sentient beings and not destroy future slave labor for the next Deathstar construction.

Destroying a planet with people could make a rebellion a lot more angrier, stronger, and tougher and as a result, make it harder for the Galactic Empire to maintain control. Keep this in mind if you have authority of a superweapon.