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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Pixie in the Playground
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    Default Destroying Starships from Within

    I want to know if there's any specific rule in Star Wars Saga Edition to, for example, how much damage does it make if I plant explosives on a imperial star destroyer's main reactor, and if it's possible to make like in the movies, to overload the reactor and destroy the ship. I'm still a newbie at this, so thank you.
    Last edited by robert.n.c; 2014-10-12 at 07:20 PM.

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    Default Re: Destroying Starships from Within

    Quote Originally Posted by robert.n.c View Post
    I want to know if there's any specific rule in Star Wars Saga Edition to, for example, how much damage does it make if I plant explosives on a imperial star destroyer's main reactor, and if it's possible to make like in the movies, to overload the reactor and destroy the ship. I'm still a newbie at this, so thank you.
    Technically, no. But any decent GM is going to make things happen if someone actually pulls that off. Also, welcome, and check out the main Saga thread a few down (the Sith Lords thread.) :)

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    Default Re: Destroying Starships from Within

    ISD's can be well over a mile long so realistically one charge isn't going to be enough to completely destroy one although you should be able to cripple it fairly well. Of course on the other hand we all know how easily that other thing was destroyed...
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    Eldritch Horror in the Playground Moderator
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    Default Re: Destroying Starships from Within

    Quote Originally Posted by Invader View Post
    ISD's can be well over a mile long so realistically one charge isn't going to be enough to completely destroy one although you should be able to cripple it fairly well. Of course on the other hand we all know how easily that other thing was destroyed...
    Not that ISDs are that well designed either, with their command bridges way up and exposed where any random fighter pilot can kamikaze his way through their front windows. A destructive chain reaction from the main reactor blowing up would be both cinematic and appropriate to how the Empire appears to design their ships.

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    Default Re: Destroying Starships from Within

    Quote Originally Posted by The Glyphstone View Post
    Not that ISDs are that well designed either, with their command bridges way up and exposed where any random fighter pilot can kamikaze his way through their front windows. A destructive chain reaction from the main reactor blowing up would be both cinematic and appropriate to how the Empire appears to design their ships.
    So a good idea is to plant some explosive mines in it's main generator

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    Default Re: Destroying Starships from Within

    Quote Originally Posted by robert.n.c View Post
    I want to know if there's any specific rule in Star Wars Saga Edition to, for example, how much damage does it make if I plant explosives on a imperial star destroyer's main reactor, and if it's possible to make like in the movies, to overload the reactor and destroy the ship. I'm still a newbie at this, so thank you.
    None specifically that I know of, but I'd make it on par with a self-destruct. Blowing up a ship from the inside is a classic of the series.
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    Default Re: Destroying Starships from Within

    The power output of a class one Star Destroyer is (according to wookiepiedia) ~7X10^24 watts. I'm making some assumptions here. Quick back of the envelope unless I've completely messed up (which is possible) means if you were to release the power output provided over a second, with say some shaped charges, the resulting blast would be about 500,000 megatons, about 10,000 times the blast force of the Tsar Bomba, the largest thermonuclear weapon ever detonated on earth.

    With this much potential internal explosion on a ship designed to be shot at with turbolasers, I'm assuming there are all kinds of safeguards to prevent this sort of thing, some mechanical some computerized. That said, you get a good engineer to go bad and disable these, and I'm pretty sure that you've destroyed your vessel. And want to retreat to a distance of at least several hundred miles and some good lead shielding before that blast goes off. Even if you can't cut out all the safeguards, or the power generation stops faster in response to catastrophic destruction going off around it, if you can eke a 2 megaton blast out of it before the reactor cuts you off you've set off a blast comparable to a good sized nuke inside their shields and armor, that ship and its crew are not making it home from their mission.
    Last edited by golentan; 2014-10-13 at 01:22 PM.
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    Eldritch Horror in the Playground Moderator
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    Default Re: Destroying Starships from Within

    Quote Originally Posted by robert.n.c View Post
    So a good idea is to plant some explosive mines in it's main generator
    If you have physical access to its main generator, planting explosive mines should be your Plan B. Plan A would involve slicing it and setting it to overload somehow.

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    Default Re: Destroying Starships from Within

    Quote Originally Posted by The Glyphstone View Post
    If you have physical access to its main generator, planting explosive mines should be your Plan B. Plan A would involve slicing it and setting it to overload somehow.
    Or, if you have already made your way past every safeguard and security on the vessel, you should be planning to steal it, not blow it up. Show Booster Terrik who's boss!

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    Default Re: Destroying Starships from Within

    I had my PCs fly a Y-Wing into an ISDs launch bay, blow up everything inside, hop out, and make a bee-line for the reactor. They set them up the bomb and then got the heck out of dodge. I gave it to them, because it was awesome, but the rules say nothing on the subject. Just whatever you do, don't let the party do it more than once. It gets old - my party had the good decency that the next time they found themselves inside a ISD, instead of blowing the reactor, they set it on a collision course with a planet instead. The result was very satisfying carnage. Change it up, never let the same trick work twice.

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    Default Re: Destroying Starships from Within

    Quote Originally Posted by gom jabbarwocky View Post
    I had my PCs fly a Y-Wing into an ISDs launch bay, blow up everything inside, hop out, and make a bee-line for the reactor. They set them up the bomb and then got the heck out of dodge. I gave it to them, because it was awesome, but the rules say nothing on the subject. Just whatever you do, don't let the party do it more than once. It gets old - my party had the good decency that the next time they found themselves inside a ISD, instead of blowing the reactor, they set it on a collision course with a planet instead. The result was very satisfying carnage. Change it up, never let the same trick work twice.
    Ah so they pulled an Anakin did they?

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    Last edited by Hopeless; 2014-10-30 at 07:22 AM.

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    Default Re: Destroying Starships from Within

    Generally, if the characters are trying to destroy an internal component of a ship... I say the component has HP equal to the vehicle's damage threshold and DR equal to the vehicle.

    As for the Power Generator of an ISD... You're blowing up a reactor that's over 100 meters across. Part of it is visible outside the ship... You know that dome behind the hangar bay? That's about 1/3rd of the reactor.

    As for the size of the boom... Do not base it on the Legends power output numbers. Those are ridiculously inflated. If you watch the films you see reactor explosions at Endor and they're only big enough to engulf the ship, not blow up everything for miles around.

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    Default Re: Destroying Starships from Within

    Quote Originally Posted by Stellar_Magic View Post
    Generally, if the characters are trying to destroy an internal component of a ship... I say the component has HP equal to the vehicle's damage threshold and DR equal to the vehicle.

    As for the Power Generator of an ISD... You're blowing up a reactor that's over 100 meters across. Part of it is visible outside the ship... You know that dome behind the hangar bay? That's about 1/3rd of the reactor.

    As for the size of the boom... Do not base it on the Legends power output numbers. Those are ridiculously inflated. If you watch the films you see reactor explosions at Endor and they're only big enough to engulf the ship, not blow up everything for miles around.
    Not to mention the 10,000 soldiers and storm troopers and 35,000+ other crew. The odds anyone would ever make it out of the hanger bay they landed in are practically nil lol.
    Last edited by Invader; 2014-10-31 at 12:56 PM.
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    Default Re: Destroying Starships from Within

    Quote Originally Posted by Invader View Post
    Not to mention the 10,000 soldiers and storm troopers and 35,000+ other crew. The odds anyone would ever make it out of the hanger bay they landed in are practically nil lol.
    Big noisy distraction while someone slices in, sets up a few parameters, and then 20 minutes after you're "driven off" the reactors go critical.

    Or, hell, vent the reactor, so now the star destroyer's sitting in space, with only what emergency power it has available, so no shields, no weapons, no hyperdrive...


    Other amusing things you could try (with adjudication required)...mess with the hyperdrive so it turns on and off randomly. Have the sublight engines overload and burn out, possibly explosively. Or hack a shuttle so it goes into hyper in the landing bay.


    Now, realistically (and I know, we're talking about Star Wars here), boarding actions are going to be a fact of life in naval warfare and such things will be known about and defended against. But no defense is perfect.

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    Default Re: Destroying Starships from Within

    Realize that an explosion that would not destroy a ship from the outside could very well cripple or destroy it from within. The armor and superstructure of a ship is designed to withstand attacks from the outside not the inside.

    Also you may have as much or more success by blowing the main armory of the ship. If you were able to blow the munitions (for example all the concussion missiles, proton torpedoes, mines, bombs) on the inside of the ship it would certainly be enough to kill the ship from the inside.

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    Default Re: Destroying Starships from Within

    If you limit yourself to Canon information, all starships in Star Wars use liquid tibanna as fuel for their reactors, they even show some of the fuel tanks in the bonus scenes for RoTS. Tibanna by itself is a highly explosive substance, and in gas form it's also the ammunition for all the turbolasers aboard. Blowing up either the Tibanna fuel stores or magazine for the guns will result in destroying the ship.

    I suspect the tibanna fuel can be used as ammunition for the guns and vice versa, it would make supplying the ship much easier.

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    Default Re: Destroying Starships from Within

    Quote Originally Posted by Stellar_Magic View Post
    If you limit yourself to Canon information, all starships in Star Wars use liquid tibanna as fuel for their reactors, they even show some of the fuel tanks in the bonus scenes for RoTS. Tibanna by itself is a highly explosive substance, and in gas form it's also the ammunition for all the turbolasers aboard. Blowing up either the Tibanna fuel stores or magazine for the guns will result in destroying the ship.

    I suspect the tibanna fuel can be used as ammunition for the guns and vice versa, it would make supplying the ship much easier.
    ISD's use hypermatter, tibanna gas is only used in the much smaller applications you mentioned.
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    Default Re: Destroying Starships from Within

    Quote Originally Posted by Invader View Post
    ISD's use hypermatter, tibanna gas is only used in the much smaller applications you mentioned.
    I was restricting myself to G level canon... Hypermatter is a creation of Curtis Saxton, the man responsible for the ridiculous 1000x G acceleration figures and power output values. What we see in the films is orders of magnitude lower power outputs, accelerations, and performance compared to what he came up with.

    As a result, I tend to run with all ships using liquid tibanna as fuel. In fact, George Lucas made the Invisible Hand (General Grievous's Flagship) used liquid tibanna as fuel... an entire sequence was filmed for RoTS where Anakin and Obi-Wan were pursued into the fuel tanks of the ship. You can watch it as part of the special features on the DVD.

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    Default Re: Destroying Starships from Within

    Quote Originally Posted by Stellar_Magic View Post
    I was restricting myself to G level canon... Hypermatter is a creation of Curtis Saxton, the man responsible for the ridiculous 1000x G acceleration figures and power output values. What we see in the films is orders of magnitude lower power outputs, accelerations, and performance compared to what he came up with.

    As a result, I tend to run with all ships using liquid tibanna as fuel. In fact, George Lucas made the Invisible Hand (General Grievous's Flagship) used liquid tibanna as fuel... an entire sequence was filmed for RoTS where Anakin and Obi-Wan were pursued into the fuel tanks of the ship. You can watch it as part of the special features on the DVD.
    You sound far more versed than I am so I'll bow to your knowledge lol.
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    Default Re: Destroying Starships from Within

    I recommend a verpine in the party, a handful of thermal detonators in mouse droids, and then some creative fast talking.

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    Default Re: Destroying Starships from Within

    Quote Originally Posted by Telwar View Post
    Or, hell, vent the reactor, so now the star destroyer's sitting in space, with only what emergency power it has available, so no shields, no weapons, no hyperdrive...
    Add an inline encryptor to the cable running from the hyperdrive console to the actual unit so instead of feeding the inputed coordanates it will instead send it to whatever place the gibberish crypto text translates to, if it translates at all.
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    Default Re: Destroying Starships from Within

    Quote Originally Posted by Stellar_Magic View Post
    I was restricting myself to G level canon... Hypermatter is a creation of Curtis Saxton, the man responsible for the ridiculous 1000x G acceleration figures and power output values. What we see in the films is orders of magnitude lower power outputs, accelerations, and performance compared to what he came up with.

    As a result, I tend to run with all ships using liquid tibanna as fuel. In fact, George Lucas made the Invisible Hand (General Grievous's Flagship) used liquid tibanna as fuel... an entire sequence was filmed for RoTS where Anakin and Obi-Wan were pursued into the fuel tanks of the ship. You can watch it as part of the special features on the DVD.
    These days it's no longer "G, T, C, S canon" - it's "Canon" and "Legends" (Canon is the movies, TCW, Rebels, and all the really new books and comics, Legends is everything else).

    And in the new Canon book Tarkin (written by an author that's collaborated with Saxton in the past) the Death Star at least, has a hypermatter reactor.

    Hopefully though, most of Saxton's other odd ideas won't survive into the new Canon - what would become Legends was already in the process of retconning some of them, before the announcement.
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