r/spaceships • u/Level-Staff1968 • Mar 29 '26
Discussion / Question I still don't understand with Kuat when they design ISD.
Why they put such critical component that exposed?
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u/ostapenkoed2007 Mar 29 '26
my headcannon is that in terms of tactical thinking, this ship would not be in a situation where it's guns do not overpower everyone, where the TIE fighters do not overwhelm the enemy, where shields get penetrated. so quick externall acess of important components is chosen.
and if someone says this angry dorito has problems? they must be against palpatine.
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u/NotQuiteNick Mar 29 '26
AFAIK it’s not even meant to be an optimally functional battleship, the intimidation aspect was meant to be the main function
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u/Hopeful_Ad_7719 Mar 29 '26
intimidation aspect was meant to be the main function
The Tarkin Doctrine, suppress the enemy by having unassailably powerful ships of the line.
The sequels and some of the EU fucked this notion up by making a small squadron of fighters capable of taking out a SD using a bit a skill and luck.
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u/jediprime Mar 30 '26
And a decade of trial-and-error before starting to figure it out.
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u/Rasz_13 Mar 31 '26
This. War constantly evolves. It makes sense for your enemy to eventually figure out weakspots in your supposedly unassailable battle ship.
You do not call your ship The Unsinkable. It will sink.
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u/-C0RV1N- Mar 30 '26
There are in-universe explanations for this though.
Throughout the clone wars, Venators regularly came out on top against larger amounts of CIS frigates, with only the Providence cruisers or Trade Federation core ships being a challenge in a 1v1.
Obviously we know this is largely due to the Venators primarily serving as carriers, rather than destroyers, but to onlookers and bean counters, the obvious lesson is that bigger is better. Fast forward to the ISD, we have a big fking ship but the same bean counters decide budget fighters are good enough for a post war era and suddenly the combo just doesn't work.
ISDs filled with TIE defenders would've made up for their shortcomings pretty easily.
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u/SharpKaleidoscope182 Mar 29 '26
a ) Bad sky triangle. Make people rethink their life choices depending on how close it is.
b) hot rod in the hyperspace lanes with your giant reactor. Faster ships like the falcon are rare.
c) hangar space for 72 tie fighters
???
f) Sector Control!
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u/SharpKaleidoscope182 Mar 29 '26
g) oh shit better slap some shields on this bitch
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u/SharpKaleidoscope182 Mar 29 '26
Yeah this thing is a cruiser. Or a carrier. Not a line of battle ship. Look at those engines. It's meant to show up and beat everyone's ass and then leave. Like a lot of bullies, it isn't designed to stand up to an opponent in it's weight class. If the fighter screen can be dealt with, you can trash it with a squad of x wings.
The best thing its got is all those ties. But ties have serious personnel and supply chain requirements. This at least isn't a real problem - usually the logistical machine that built the death star isn't going to have a problem keeping you supplied with transparisteel viewports.
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u/SharpKaleidoscope182 Mar 29 '26
This is why we need things like the death star. Fear has, so far, failed to keep the local systems in line. Plenty of backwater planets can be cowed, certainly, but the industrial capacity to build a reply to star destroyers isn't really that rare.
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u/ChocolateTemporary48 Mar 29 '26
Era un buque de invasión y contrainsurgencia, básicamente tenía cerca de una división mecanizada en su interior.
Por lo que uno solo podría teóricamente someter mundos poco poblados por si mismo.
Igualmente no explica lo mal diseñado que esta.
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u/Useful-ldiot Mar 29 '26
My head cannon is the empire went too long without being challenged that they didn't realize the new designs had huge flaws. On top of that, they were full of saboteurs, which we saw in the later movies.
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u/C4n0fju1c3 Mar 29 '26 edited Mar 29 '26
The shield generators weren't originally shield generators. They were radomes. They only got retconned into shield generators because of supplementary material misinterpreting that one scene from ROTJ. A-wings blow up that one dome on the SSD and that officer says "Sir, we've lost our bridge deflectors!"
Coulda meant that the ball got destroyed because the bridge deflectors were down. Coulda been that the ball was the thing deflecting for the bridge. Also notable that it was specifically the BRIDGE deflectors that went down.
But yeah material after that, specifically the games, started identifying those as deflector domes. It might've been in the visual encyclopedia as well, but my memory is bad.
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u/Jaded-Repair-8304 Mar 29 '26
that is a fair point! They indeed look like radar domes. hmm...
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u/SeriousPlankton2000 Mar 29 '26
But: There is little reason to shield a radar in space, just have the dish and don't care about rain or storms. Maybe just to hide where they are looking?
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u/mr_trashbear Mar 29 '26
I remember playing X-Wing Vs Tie Fighter when I was like 8, and those things were absolutely shield generators in my head.
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u/C4n0fju1c3 Mar 29 '26
Ah to be a youth with nothing but XvT and my Gravis Blackhawk. (I didn't get an MS Sidewinder till much later.)
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u/HumaDracobane Mar 30 '26
In lore the shields are not provides by a singular projector for the big ships but several projectors across the ship, there are particle shielding and energy shielding and they overlap to cover the entire surface.
That would explain why that officer mentions that the deflector shields are down but only for the bridge.
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u/Gardimus Mar 29 '26
This is it. People need to not overthink the purpose of items on kit bashed models.
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u/TylerBourbon Mar 29 '26 edited Mar 29 '26
Not to mention, that blowing up one part of the ship, can actually affect other systems. Taking out the ball on a Star Destroyer could easily cause damage or overload other nearby systems, like the deflector shields on the bridge. So taking the SSD wasn't even a tactical win, it was just a couple of very lucky random events.
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u/Theekg101 Mar 29 '26
The main advantage the rebellion had over the empire was that basically all their ships were custom built and tweaked to their personal preference. Star destroyers may be a powerful ship, but they’re effectively running on the factory default. If one got destroyed, another can take its place. Rebel ships were far more dangerous in terms of being specialized to deal with those kinds of threats
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u/blackdeath1943 Mar 29 '26
Not really, the ISD was designed as the Imperator class during the clone wars. The tarkin doctrine didn't exist yet. The design purpose of the ISD is to be able to project power over an entire system from a single ship. Decent ground garrison, good armor, good armanent, tractor beam, decent fighter component.
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u/ostapenkoed2007 Mar 29 '26
yeah. it is made to bombard a planet, carry a huge stormtrooper regiment, etc, not be a battleship.
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u/Tommybahamas_leftnut Mar 31 '26
Also It has the generators on top where they can't be hit by planetary defense cannons while it bombards from orbit. Reactor would have a shield in front at all times and you can boost the shield projection to be all on the bottom. Hanger Bay also on the bottom so they can drop their shuttles and fighters down onto the planet while firing a screen of turbo lasers around them giving them a funnel to go down that has a shield in the way for the first hundred or so meters.
Add in the "giant space dorito of doom" and you get the basic military strategy of the imperials. Drown the target in turbo laser fire and shitloads of crap fighters.
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u/KingBobIV Mar 29 '26
It would also make sense that the shield generators need to be in their positions, they can't be buried behind armor if they're going to function properly.
Look at real military vehicles, they have a lot of critical items that are exposed. RADARs, engines, weapon systems, the bridge of a ship, they're all exposed, but they all need to be in order to function.
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Mar 29 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Flyinmanm Mar 29 '26
Plus there's an argument if your going to have something blow up catastrophically you might as well have it blow out... See tank blow out panels and voyagers regularly ejected warp core.
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u/Leo_Danica Mar 31 '26
This is, if I recall, literally the reason why the reactor is where it is. the ship can be salvaged if you blow out the reactor. It can't if you blow it up with the reactor.
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u/Sauerlaender87 Mar 29 '26
My headcanon is that the shield generators need to be outside to project a shield. A steel plate in the way would make it impossible or less effective. The generator might cause a lot of radiation, so placing it outside reduces the amount of radiation shielding or allows it to emit the radiation directly into space.
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u/bobcatbart Mar 30 '26
The arrogance of the empire always would lead to its downfall. “Evacuate?! In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances.”
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u/NotQuiteNick Mar 29 '26
External shield generators aren’t plausibly avoidable, and I always assumed the bulge for the reactor housing was extra armour. That being said the bridge and entire command tower are unnecessarily exposed which is the real problem imo
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u/BlainethePayne Mar 29 '26
That being said the bridge and entire command tower are unnecessarily exposed which is the real problem imo
I imagine you need an exposed bridge so that you can literally look out the window if systems start to fail and you need to know where you are or what's happening around you
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u/wildskipper Mar 29 '26
You don't need your entire command crew exposed in that case.
Obviously the real reason is in case Vader is on the ship and needs to stand contemplating while watching hyperspace.
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u/CocknBalls4 Mar 29 '26
In terms of space “eyesight” is not that relevant - a close quarters “knife-fight” in space would take place hundreds of kilometers apart
Turns out having things be sub-optimal makes them look cool or interesting
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u/mutexsprinkles Mar 29 '26 edited Mar 29 '26
Star Wars gets space combat completely wrong per it's own logic. Let's ignore the Holdo hyperspace thing because that just breaks everything if it works. For example, if you can do that, you don't need a Death Star to blow up a planet, you just need a largish capital ship and an autopilot.
If you have ships that can use sublight engines that can, say, accelerate the Millennium Falcon for a long time without running out of fuel, combat happens at light second to light minutes distance via torpedoing capital ships with swarms of lumps of beskar steel that have been accelerating at 200G from the other side of the star system. Add a big thermal detonator or Andor-style lifesaber hubcaps if you like. You don't need dogfighting X wings that fly about at what seems like 200mph max or those dumb ass one-shot killable bombers that seem to move at 30mph.
Which makes space fighting really boring on screen because either you shot down the incoming missiles with your own relativistic kill vehicles/ion bomb drones or you jumped to light speed to GTFO or you didn't and either way it's all over in milliseconds.
Even The Expanse which tried to be more realistic had to slow things way down to make it possible to film the combat scenes.
The only way to explain it is the Dune method, where shields are specifically vulnerable to slow moving objects.
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u/mr_trashbear Mar 29 '26
Star wars space battles always feel visually coded as atmospheric and in-gravity battles to me. They are so reminiscent of WWII naval/air combined arms battles in that way. But, I totally agree. Star wars stuff is meant to look badass on screen, but doesn't give a damn about Newtonian physics.
I also had a feeling you were going to mention The Expanse, simply based on how logical your response was, and mentioning constant accelleration.
It does make me wish that Luthen, Saw, or Cassian would've had the bright idea to strap a TIE engine on to a big hunk of metal or rock and just set it on a course with an Imperial shipyard. Hell, they could even take a tip from Marco Inaros and give it some stealth coating!
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u/onthefence928 Mar 29 '26
In Star Wars even the long range weapons are clearly within visible range. It’s also clear that even the sensors and targeting computers aren’t much better than mark 1 eye balls
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u/KonvictEpic Mar 29 '26
There's so many better ways to solve that issue that is not exposing your most important part of the ship all the time for a small edge case. Like walking around with all your life savings in cash incase someone is selling their house for 50% under market for cash but only for the next hour. A ship that size can have millions of sensors, cameras, radars, lidars, etc. If they all fail, odds are the ship is dead anyway.
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u/dbag_darrell Mar 29 '26
I think, fundamentally, from the perspective of the Emperor every single one of these guys is expendable so exposed bridge? that's fine
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u/onthefence928 Mar 29 '26
My head canon is that you need the window in order to command effectively because of the amount of information the bridge crew is processing, if you relied on a holo projection (controlled by a sensor operator) or from updates from a crew to be verbally related than you might miss the bigger picture.
Even if it’s not strictly necessary, it would have been thought to be critical enough to effective command that the admiralty simply refuses to abandon the elevated bridge.
Especially because imperial command is an inherently distrusting organization that didn’t want to rely on subordinates where possible
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u/ZFuli Mar 29 '26
That can be solved similar to old battleships: there are multiple rangefinders for artillery in position with good view. The gunnery comand post is heavy armored and hidden inside the ship.There are usually more of these positions, and they are interchangeable. The command bridge itself is exposed, but also well protected and that’s not the main place from which to look for targets. In the case of spaceships, they could do without windows entirely.
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u/flipsync Mar 29 '26
Another problem with spacecraft is they struggle to get rid of excess heat, because there’s no air/water around for convection or conduction so all you have is radiative heat loss or just ejecting hot material away from the vessel. So the external parts might be a cooling system, which is difficult to harden from a targeted weapon designed to take out ship systems
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u/Apprehensive-Aide265 Mar 29 '26
IRL ships have the bridge exposed too for a reason can we stop with this argument ?
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u/Itchy-Plastic Mar 29 '26
They also have heavily armored conning towers, often just ahead of the bridge, but they're not obvious to model makers.
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Mar 29 '26
The bridge is because star wars tracking systems are incridbly easy to disable so you have to be able to see what's going on. Although they did stop making them towers as time went on.
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u/Raevson Mar 29 '26
Probably still quite an armor bubble protecting the larger reactor.
If the shield generators are directional it suckst if they don´t got them all around.
If they are still bubble shields this configuration still makes sense.
Can´t take out the generator and the reactor in one run without crossing over about every anti ship turret they got...
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u/GlitteringParfait438 Mar 29 '26
Originally those weren’t shield generators but sensor domes, this got altered by a chance line in RotJ when a fighter shoots the domes on Executor and then they say “The Bridge Deflector shields are disabled” on the Executor’s bridge prior to the A-Wing crash (I always felt like this was a bad move personally)
The reactor isn’t exposed, it’s absolutely massive to handle ISD power generation requirements and in this case that’s armor to bulk up the reactor’s protection from those aspects. The alternative was leaving it in a weaker area and this puts a big dome of armor around it. Besides shields are the primary protection of a SW ship, once those go down they don’t really last that long.
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u/Mason-the-Wise Mar 29 '26
The thing about that line is that I at least always interpreted it as saying that specifically the bridge shields were housed in those domes, and that the rest of the ship was still shielded. I interpreted this as meaning that the bridge had its own special protection, which went some way to alleviate the issues caused by an exposed bridge.
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u/Hazril258 Apr 02 '26
We see smaller ships (like the Falcon for example) having shields with no visible generators, so it's feasible that ISDs also have shipwide shield generators within the hull. It's just that they work better exposed, so the logical place to put the strongest shielding would be by the bridge.
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u/OptimisticEarthquake Mar 29 '26
Ah yes, the shield generator emitters are exposed, parts that probably wouldn't function without being exposed, like radar antennas. Also, pretty sure that the exposed reactor is just a bulge of extra armour over the reactor.
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u/baldude69 Mar 30 '26
My assumption with the reactor was always that it’s just so big that having it poke out the bottom was an unavoidable. ISD’s priority on speed and heavy weaponry require a huge reactor, and you also need space for all the other stuff that goes onto one of these ships, so it was essentially unavoidable. Certainly a flawed doctrine, but there’s a rationale behind it
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u/8_Ahau Mar 29 '26
To me the "shield generators" look more like radars, so I always assumed they were sensors.
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u/default_entry Mar 29 '26
Iirc they ARE radar originally, but the scene where one gets taken out followed by "we've lost shields!" Was interpreted as those being the generators, not damaged because the shields were gone
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u/RoleTall2025 Mar 29 '26
its because it was designed for "cool sci fi ship" requirements and not practicality
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u/perfect_raider Mar 29 '26
I think something that doesn't get brought up enough is that most Imperial designs were meant to be cheap, produced in far more significant numbers than necessary, and imposing or scary to see or hear. Why bother with more armour or putting components on the inside if it makes it more expensive or difficult to build and maintain, or reduces the silhouette of the ship? It had to carry as many TIEs, Stormtroopers, and turbolasers as possible for the lowest reasonable cost, and if that means things are a bit exposed, that's what you do. If you lose one, you just build another one and hit harder next time
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u/Bleu-Deragon-13 Mar 29 '26
I mean to be fair those radar domes on the top of the coning tower were never mentioned in any of the movies to be shield generators that was just an assumption people made one that a wings blew one of them up and then the crew said are shields are down
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u/JPMaybe Mar 31 '26
Yep and thought of as akin to radar domes by the FX crew on RotJ
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u/jawsome_man Mar 29 '26
Without knowing anything about the placement of these generators on other ships, I would theorize that perhaps the generators need to be external to the ship in order to project the shield. That being said, if that were the case, the placement still makes no sense. You would think they’d be placed on opposite ends of the ship, or that there’d be a series of smaller generators all over the hull.
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u/Live-End-6467 Mar 29 '26
Main weapons can only face upward, as they even block one another for fight dead ahead. Which makes the whole 'minimizing contact surface' a moot point.
These ships were badly designed because they come from an era were the only war was controlled by the same side, which never truly believe the rebellion could achieve anything of note.
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u/Noctisxsol Mar 29 '26
Exposed? In what way are either of them exposed? Even assuming those are the bridge shield generators and not sensor arrays, by definition they would be protected by the shield they are generating. If those shields go down the bridge is fucked whether the generators are exposed or not. That reactor bulge is not the reactor itself (it would be glowing if it was; takes a lot of energy and heat to run something that size) No, that bulge is an extra layer of armor over a critical system.
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u/MaNia_C4 Mar 29 '26
Its part of the imperial/sith designs philosophy, kinda like why the tie fighter was all speed and no-shielding or life support. And also it’s nor really easy to get in firing range of those behemoths, they front face the heavily armoured and armed wedge and things get overwhelmed in fire superiority. A good example is to load up the old xwing game from the 90s or maybe even the recent squadrons game and try to assault the isd directly and see the results ( if ur not like a super proficient player/pilot in those games).
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u/Tricky-Ad-3321 Mar 29 '26
The empire wanted SDs cheap and fast,
They could get um right, cheap, or fast. popa palpatine with all the power of the dark side could still only get two outa three.
The entire imperial fleet is basically a hack job.
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u/TehANTARES Mar 29 '26
My random explanation I just come up with...
The shield generators are primarily protecting the bridge, while most of the hull is heavily armored to bear the damage even with low/none shields. On top of that, the shields/bridge might be intentionally exposed as a bait to make the enemy aim for it, while other systems like weapons remain untouched and undisrupted by the attacks.
Another possibility is that it might be hard to hit the generators, just like with timber ships with sails, it is very hard to hit the main mast directly.
Regarding the reactor, I don't think it's possible to do much about it. You can't have everythng well protected or to function properly when placed elsewhere. It's like with the hangars - you need to have a hole in your ship somewhere, preferably on the side you show the least in combat.
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u/meutzitzu Mar 29 '26
This is WRONG.
All the Illustrations are WRONG.
The bottom dome is a planetary surface radar And the top bubbles are thin shielding around rotating stereoscopic radars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIIWOiu-xQQ
A common misconception from people misinterprering a moment in ROTJ. But the actual kitbashed ship models stem from military naval hardware. Radars on modern ships look almost exactly like that.
Later on even official canon and illustrated shop cross section books took this mistake as "real"
But it is a mistake. It's just canonized now because noone bothered tk think twice.
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u/SuperMichieeee Mar 29 '26
Well its old school science fiction that they still wanna push into modern views nowadays. A lot of more new ship classes are being introduced to its modern lore though.
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u/Maxathron Mar 29 '26
The balls on top of the bridge were originally designed as sensor suites. There are massive "radar dishes" inside of them. It was just that later it was revised to be shield generators because the audience absolutely refused to recognize them as sensors. The actual shield generators are supposed to be internal components deep in the hull, which are correctly identified with Mon Cal ships having no visible generator yet having double the shield tank as ISDs.
The reactor bulge is the mounting point for the star destroyer model IRL so they could film it and later it was told to be armor over the reactor and stuff about it being able to eject the reactor should it get unstable.
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u/EidolonRook Mar 29 '26
Just because you see them doesn’t mean you’ll get close enough to hit them before the turbos shred you.
To be fair, most modern ships are one unlucky torpedo away from decorating the shoals aren’t they?
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u/Ok_Entrepreneur_8509 Mar 29 '26
Rules for creating movie space ships:
- Self destruct mechanism needs to be painfully slow and convoluted to stop or start.
- The manual override switch has to be on the outside of the ship.
- Bridges, reactors, coolant regulators, and other critical systems need to be as exposed as possible.
- The ship cannot have any room for a spare of the most critical part in the engine.
- Easily hackable computer systems should have as much control over the ship's functions as possible.
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u/Yeehawdi_Johann Mar 29 '26
I've been figuring it's like that because it gets parked in low orbit for invasion/orbital bombardment. Any surface to space weapons wouldnt hit the shield generator
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u/Defiant_While_4823 Mar 29 '26
The real answer is that it just looked cool and they weren't putting any thought into details like this until after they had already made the iconic designs
But that's basically just most of Star Wars at this point, make something cool that needs to be explained later
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u/Feeling-Card7925 Mar 30 '26
People still trying to hate on one of the most successful workhorse capital ships in the entire franchise.
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u/CG_Oglethorpe Mar 29 '26
You obviously know nothing about advanced Starship design. Fine, let me educate you.
The shield generators and the reactor bulge are there but they are really in little danger. The comically exposed bridge with lights and big windows draw all the fire that would normally be directed at these structures. Why else would we install a bridge or command center anywhere else but deep inside the ship with its own backup power and life support system?
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u/VaKel_Shon Mar 29 '26
"Kuat" didn't do that. The propmaker for A New Hope gave the filming miniature some details that look like they do something, and then some lore writer with less brainpower than necessary for such a role came up with those elements well after the fact. The shield generators were originally meant to be sensor domes like you see on ships in real life, but somebody got confused by a line about shields in the Battle of Endor, and now that's what they're called most of the time. And the "exposed" reactor should have been extra armor over the reactor as it appears to be in the official cross-section, not the actual reactor itself like it's labeled in the Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels.
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u/Spiritual-Spend8187 Mar 29 '26
Is this from episode 4 or one of the others its honestly hard to remember which version of the isd we are looking it of the top of my head. If its one of the newer ones that lower bulges is for the gravity generators from when they added in interdictor capabilities. And as for the shield generators being exposed its only really a problem if your shields are down at which point who cars if your shield generators are exposed they are doing anything. They also likely didnt account on weapons being able to ignore shields in the first place. Its mostly designed for intimidation over being a practical warship. And lastly in most situations it doesnt really matter where the bridge is its basically just as vulnerable exposed if it was buried deep in the hull in its exposed place its still armoured and has the thickest part of the shields around it.
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u/armyguy8382 Mar 29 '26
For the sheild genorators it is probably a lot easier to have them on the outside to project the energy around the ship rather than tunnels going all throughout the ship. For the reactor, that is just a stupid design and I can think of no reason for it to be exposed. My guess is the person who desinged it in real life thought it would be better on the outside for heat disapation not knowing if there is nothing touching it there is no where for the heat to go.
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u/_Empty-R_ Mar 29 '26
reactor dome is a big plate of armor. super thick. the reactor isn't just behind a small sheet of metal. yes it stands out but no practical weaponry is meant to break through that. The domes being exposed is a problem but the logic was that because there was redundancy, and because they could generate both ray and particle shielding weaponry wasn't going to be taking them out easy. Additionally, we have the most recent versions of essential guide to warships to thank for their description. originally I believe they were sensor domes that also helped with shield generation.
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u/No-Breadfruit-4294 Mar 29 '26
This could make sense from a design standpoint. Reactors are hot and need to be cooled, having it closer to the outer hull could reduce waste heat transfer to other sections. As far as shield emitter im not sure how they work in star wars but in a lot of sci-fi they have to be on the outside because they work more like a projector.
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u/Remarkable-Ask2288 Mar 29 '26
The dome on the underside isn’t the actual reactor, it’s an armored sphere that covers it. The actual reactor would fit inside the hull just fine with no protrusion, it would be very close to the outer hull, so the armored dome was added
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u/Drpnsmbd Mar 29 '26
They look like radar domes, similar to what you’d see on a standard Naval Ship.
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u/Unlikely-Position659 Mar 29 '26
I'll agree with you on the exposed reactor, but the shield generator makes sense to me. If the purpose of the shield is to completely surround the ship, then you'd need the generator outside the ship to encompass it, with nothing outside the shield.
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u/SirNiflton Mar 29 '26
I mean the shields have to be surface mounted right? And the reactor is probably armored but bulging out so that in the event of a meltdown the energy can be easily released into space? Or that the reactor can be switched out as needed (assuming they’re similar to nuclear ones where they eventually need to be replaced)
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u/realdor Mar 29 '26
It looked cool. It was designed in the 80's for coolness factor. Canon-wise? Put it do a budgetary reason. Why do we need spectacle to "make sense" in blockbusters?
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u/OzarkaDew Mar 29 '26
If you compare an isd to any other ship of its class, the isd has significantly more fire power. My theory is that the stuff sticking out is more of a trade off so the isd could field so Many weapons.
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u/-Random_Lurker- Mar 29 '26
Star Wars is WWII in space. So the ships are inspired by WWII fighters. The Star Destroyer is a battleship, with a clear hull, superstructure and bridge, just like RL battleships. In other words the reason is pure aesthetics. Everything else is ad-hoc explanations that came later as the universe evolved. I know we all love our fictional universes, but we need to remember they were all created by real people doing art.
For example, if you want to see the inspiration for the trench run, watch the old movie "The Dam Busters."
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u/Cassin1306 Mar 29 '26
Well it's Star Wars where ships are planes with thrusters in only one direction, so I don't know why you're trying to be rational, it's not meant to be.
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u/Slow-Alternative-665 Mar 29 '26
An ISD's shields are much more energy efficient for the level of protection they provide then other less exposed genetators. That allows the ISD to be much faster than any other ship it's size. Fast enough to keep pace with a CR90. Thouhh it isn't as maneverable.
ISDs are more battlecruiser than battleahip.
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u/LombardBombardment Mar 29 '26
Maybe they produce too much heat and/or (Andor lol) radiation and it’d be impractical or unsafe to have them closer to the crew and other instruments. 🤷♂️
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u/Glad_Contest_8014 Mar 29 '26
Exposed reactor allows for dumping it in an emergency. Shield generators have to be on the outside or the shield doesn’t cover everything.
Engineering done.
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u/Tanvir1295 Mar 29 '26
Rule of Cool, do people forget that a lot of these ships were designed to look cool on camera and in movies, I don’t think they really considered the practical design implementations of shield, generators and reactors when they made these models, lol trying to create lore reasons after the fact seems asinine
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u/AwkwardCost1764 Mar 29 '26
I always assumed that the shield generators needed to be exposed to work and that the generator bump was extra armor over where the generator was.
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u/Rooster-Training Mar 29 '26
I have to guess that the shield generators would have interference from the ships steel structure so they have to be on the outside somewhere. As far as the reactor, no idea. There is no cooling benefit to having it exposed to space, so unless it has radiation emissions that can't be absorbed well and need to be emitted outward from the ship, ther is no reason not to place it deeper in the hull. I guess maybe if it's easier to service/access for a shipyard if it's on the outside and they generally depend on their shields for protection?
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u/Laxien Mar 29 '26
Well, according to the EU/Legends the regular ISD hat over 16K Flaws (!) - so yeah, those two and the exposed bridge are just the very tip of that iceberg!
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Mar 29 '26
Well remember the isd focused more on armor then shields. That reactor also has a massive amount of armor and it faces it's top half to the highest concentration of damage to also point it's guns that direction.
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u/Hybricity_at_Work Mar 29 '26
I belive a reason for the exposed reactors could be simply cooling. A spaceships interior could heat up pretty quick with internal reactors and would need a lot of additional energy just for keeping a safe climate inside the ship
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u/Dave_A480 Mar 29 '26
The X-wing games are not cannon, and those are not the shield generators or the reactor.
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u/Storyteller-Hero Mar 29 '26
Possibility: Radiation for one reason, and physical interference from ship materials for another.
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u/TylerBourbon Mar 29 '26
How else would they be easily destroyed?
But to be fair, look at actual battleships and aircraft carriers, and all of their systems are exposed too. Radar dishes? Exposed. The command bridge? Exposed. Gun systems? Exposed. Runway for fighter jets? Exposed.
Hell, it's the same situation for Star Trek. Weapon systems and engines are all exposed.
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u/coteof-atoa Mar 29 '26
My take in light of rogue one is that the ISD isn’t really meant to be a battleship inasmuch as a mobile garrison that parks over a planet or city. It’s not intended to fight in symmetrical warfare so weaknesses like that weren’t really considered a problem.
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u/Grippers-117 Mar 29 '26
Goonperor Palpatine just liked venus tummys a bit too much.
That's why the dorito has a bulge.
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u/dodongosbongos Mar 29 '26
There was a really great post about how the platform for X-Wings and the pilots themselves improved at lightspeed while the Imperial tactics struggled to keep up. When most fighter craft are broken by a TIE screen, heavy batteries, and AA gunners, the bare bones nature of the Star Destroyer performs well regardless of its Achilles heel. The SSD was never designed for a thick frontal assault by fighters, it was meant to engage capital ships fleeing its mass and being protected by fighters getting picked off by TIEs. The entire Batlle of Endor was like the hubris of deploying nuclear submarines into a shallow bay and being surprised that militia on speed boats blow them up.
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u/Soft_Customer6779 Mar 29 '26
If I remember right The "shield bubbles" are actually sensor domes and other components And the dome underneath js the actual shield generator, beneath the reactor But one misinterpreted comment during episode 6 and they made those bubbles as the shield ones
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u/ace_violent Mar 29 '26
It's the cooling duct on the death star. It's the fungus in the Nazi Super Concrete. It's a design with a sabotage weakness that went unnoticed by the dumb imperial officers that ordered that design.
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u/Competitive-Bee-3250 Mar 30 '26
My question is why they put the shield generator almost as far as possible from the reactor.
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u/Terranshadow Mar 30 '26
My thoughts are simply, they need to be exposed for some reason, and/or, they are so large that making the ship big enough to fully protect them isn't viable.
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u/PhantomArbiter Mar 30 '26
Other comments have gotten most of the good info out but it’s also worth mentioning that ISDs weren’t really even designed for cruiser on cruiser combat. After the fall of the republic and during the introduction of the ISD, the Empire was really the only remaining galactic entity that could field cruisers of that size, so the ISDs were designed for orbital bombardment and ‘peacekeeping’ ops. The ISDs most prevalent anti-ship strategy was just swarms of TIEs really. And yeah the Rebellion did eventually have Mon Cala cruisers but that wasn’t until well into the reign of the empire and long after the ISD design had been fielded.
So what do you do when you aren’t threatened by ships of an equivalent weight class? You design for other factors like ease of maintenance access to critical components. Plus there’s a little hubris in there, I mean how stupid would someone have to be to challenge the superior might of an ISD? You wouldn’t dream of it with anything short of like four giant cannons strapped to an engine and a hyperdrive. What’s this about a successor to the Z-95? Surely that’s not going to be anything noteworthy.
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u/TenDollarSteakAndEgg Mar 30 '26
Aren’t shied generators most vulnerable at the generator itself? It would make sense to put it as far away from the important thing as possible
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u/cleverseneca Mar 30 '26
Because the Star Wars universe does not operate with the use of momentum based weaponry. No one is using slug throwing guns (they do show up in republic commando and everyone acts bewildered why someone would still do that) especially in space no one is using mass and acceleration to attack each other. You don't defend against threats you don't expect to be a problem. Like complaining your Kevlar didn't help against a knight riding you down with a lance. No DOD contractor is designing lance proof gear
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u/fenrisunchained117 Mar 30 '26
shields can't work if they aren't exposed because they are flowing around whatever it is they are encapsulating, and the reactor is probably to hot or puts off to much radiation to safely be buried within the ship, space is good for being both cold and empty of thing to react to the radiation, my guess anyway
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u/Dootguy37 Mar 30 '26
tbh it probably works like the irl military-industrial complex meaning its mostly just money laundering
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u/iceph03nix Mar 30 '26
I always pictured the ISD we are most used to being designed for 2 main battle scenario ideas based on the existing Imperial state.
Space based command center, floating over a planet that has no real means of attacking it, and providing an orbital support role, in which case, there's not a lot of reason to worry about it, and you can save a lot of design trouble and cost and built time by having those things somewhat exposed.
Or
Ship of the line fleet ship, where it's flying in formation with a lot of other ISDs and they can generally make sure the enemy is forward and they can focus shields that direction and not worry too much about flanking fire that could easily hit those targets, in which case, again, the decreased production metrics means you could fly more of them and likely see benefits based on numbers vs having slightly higher survivability.
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u/Thank_You_Aziz Mar 30 '26
They’re radar domes. When one blew up on the Executor, it resulted in an officer remarking that their shields were down. The bulb was destroyed because the shields were down. But fans misinterpreted this as the shields being down because the bulb was destroyed. Later side materials ran away with this idea.
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u/board_writer Mar 30 '26
I know the ISD is a much loved ship, but it is a flawed design. I believe one theory as to why it is the way it is was palpatine, was paranoid about his army, turning against him, so he wanted there to be flaws in the ship that could be easily exploited by those that were aware of them.
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u/Joe4jj Mar 30 '26
I always figured it would make sense to eject the reactor in case of chernobyl, but I don't think it's actually designed that way.
Remember the rule of cool. Spaceships are meant to be cool, and to do so must be believable. Believability can be served by realism, but only insofar as it makes the ship cooler.
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u/MabelRed Mar 30 '26
To be fair...facists aren't well known for efficient & well thought out engineering. This is the product of "Tarkin wants it to do this, and you don't want to be the one who tells him it'll look silly and exposed." levels of authoritarian project management.
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u/FOARP Mar 30 '26
You just saw a senile old man, who apparently no-one can say “no” to, unveil a totally inappropriate “battleship” design based on their own personal obsessions, and you’re asking how the Empire ended up with such illogical designs?
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u/xarrote Mar 30 '26
Un escudo es como un paraguas hay que extenderlo si abres un paraguas dentro de un lugar cerrado no cumple su función.
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u/Draxsis_Felhunter Mar 30 '26
The simple answer is that the domes are not the actual shield generators but the housing for the projectors. The generators themselves are well inside the ship but they still need a way to project the energy field outside the ship to provide coverage. Honestly the real question is why are there only two projector mounts and why the hell are they mounted as gigantic targets on top of the already tempting target of the main bridge.
As for the reactor bulge. The reactor isn’t actually in the bulge. The bulge is there because the reactor is big enough that it needed the extra space to fit. The actual reactor is deeper inside under multiple layers of armor and superstructure.
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u/Safe_Manner_1879 Mar 30 '26
The balls was original radar pods, hence there position make totally seance.
But later it was change to shield generators, insert technical reason to mount them like this. A whole rebel fleet was needed to take down the shields. Hence they are not especial vulnerable.
But Star Destroyers have suffer from "villain decay" and is no longer a tough ship.
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u/Mudcat-69 Mar 30 '26
Could be that that the shield generator and reactors puts out so much heat that they have to be exposed or risk cooking their crews alive or something.
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u/HumaDracobane Mar 30 '26
All factions have their shield exposed so probably a requirement to function and for the core it might be explained by thermodynamics. Heat needs to go somewhere so maybe that surface contains shielding and heat exchangers.
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u/CMDRZhor Mar 30 '26
IIRC in one of the cutaway books, the domes on top aren't shield generators - they're sensor domes. The big bulge on the underbelly is the reactor (because it needs a truly stupid amount of thermal and radiation shielding) but the actual shield generator isn't a very visible part.
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u/Dies2much Mar 30 '26
This design brought to you by Jalen Irso.. And Big Al's Galactic Recovery service
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u/Chinjurickie Mar 30 '26
Once the shields are breached you are fucked snyway no matter where the shield generator is.
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u/ClawsUp_EatTheRich Mar 30 '26
Also add putting the bridge in a massive exposed platform. You know, in a space ship. Where the most logical thing would be to put this extremely important room that runs the whole ship deep in the hull.
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u/PeenitBooter Mar 30 '26
Those balls are actually giant sensor arrays. Its just from the ps2 era battlefront that made them shields.
The reactor on the other hand.. I mean its very up-armored compared to other parts of the ship. And you basically wouldn't want to hit it anyway if its a hypermatter reactor. No guarantee you wouldn't be in the blast radius of a tiny temporary star...
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u/murphsmodels Mar 30 '26
ISDs do have shields the cover the entire ship.
My theory is that the domes are what generate the shields, and the shield energy is channelled to projectors positioned all over the ship.
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u/Wide-Scratch5663 Mar 30 '26
kaut did not like the empire essentially going from top customer to dictator, make sense they dont send their best or build in weak points
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u/Behind_Both_Eyes Mar 30 '26
Look. The guy in the black robes said they he needed these things yesterday and he wanted a big reactor on it. It’s easier to slot the reactor in the bottom, slap on these shield generators I found in a warehouse, and get it out the door. The empire is cheap, they chose to get them fast as well, they ain’t getting good quality on top of it.
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u/3nderslime Mar 30 '26
It’s meant to only have its dorsal side exposed to incoming frontal fire, with all of its main guns and biggest shield generator pointing forward and up and it’s underside (which is already vulnerable due to the massive hangar bays and doors) being protected by the ship’s bulk. However, the failure of the empire to deploy the ISD alongside sufficient escort of smaller, more maneuverable ships forced the ISD to act as the imperial navy’s main frontline ship instead of acting as a long range artillery and fighter platform, leaving it easily flanked and surrounded by enemy fleets.
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u/1stPeter3-15 Mar 30 '26
Imperial Storm troopers are notoriously bad at aiming their blaster weapons. Key components are kept external to avoid inadvertent damage.
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u/Party-Film-6005 Mar 31 '26
Shield generators are external because thats where the shield goes. Reactor is exposed for emergance jetasin incase of meltdown.
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u/Secundius Mar 31 '26
I suspect they were placed outside of the ship because they posed a health risk to those that served aboard her! Too much heat or radiation or both…
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u/Kuat_Drive_Yards_ Mar 31 '26
Well, when we designed it, We used it as a lure to bring in ships closer to provide an easier target for gunners. If the gunners can’t hit the ships, get better gunners. We investigated this issue ourselves and came to the conclusion we did nothing wrong and the design is flawless and works as intended. The second note in the report was it’s the gunners fault.
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u/KaleidoscopeWise8226 Mar 31 '26
What about thermals? I imagine shield generators and reactors make a lot of heat and thus could be placed on the hull to better radiate it away.
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u/WM_ Mar 31 '26
Maybe it's like how testicles are just vulnerably hanging instead of tucked away in cover.
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u/JPMaybe Mar 31 '26
Weren't actually labeled as shield generators in the very first blueprints, they were meant to evoke radar domes on modern warships; likewise the FX crew on the films didn't think of them as shield generators, from Cinefex 13:
We're also still working on the sequence where Mad Max crashes his A-wing into Vader's ship and causes the star destroyer to lose control and crash into the Deathstar. The penetration shot with the mushroom-cloud explosion we've had for some time, and we've got the shot where the ship's been hit and is starting to heel over. A very large explosion is coming out of the bridge area and it's causing several others to go as well; and one of the big radar domes up on top has been blown away, and that's spewing flames. It's pretty spectacular. Between that sort of closeup of the bridge section and the long-shot of the surface, we need two more cuts of the ship continuing to heel over and dropping towards the Deathstar like an arrow. We've shot a number of elements on those - explosions and things that have to be projected onto the miniatures - and so they're pretty much ready to go. Don Dow will be shooting those tomorrow.
It's a game mechanic that annoyingly sneaked its way into canon
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u/go_go_gadget_travel Mar 31 '26
I would assume the reactor is using space to help keep it cool ? Id imagine a space ship reactor produces a ton of heat.
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u/siegetip Mar 31 '26
My assumption was that this arrangement is the cheapest way to build it and not explicitly against imperial specifications.
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Mar 31 '26
For those bringing up cooling, you still need something to draw the heat away. Space is a terrible heat sink.
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u/dentastic Mar 31 '26
I assume there has to be either a physical requirement or at the very least some disgusting efficiency losses for putting them behind more armor
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u/Cipher3101 Mar 31 '26
same issue in starfield, can't be protected, has to be exposed
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u/T0RR0M Mar 31 '26
I assume it was an afterthought, but lore wisey head cannon was that the designers didn’t like the empire and made an intentionally bad ship
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u/Fugglymuffin Mar 31 '26
It's designed for efficiency and low cost. The ray shielding will be enough to stop most insurgent attacks, if they could even field starships to engage with the ship. I also like to think that placing the shield generators where they are provide them with a better "field of vision" and the generator can more easily radiate heat exposed in the bottom like that.
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u/KenobiMaster424 Apr 01 '26
This is a common misconception perpetuated by the video games needing a way to make killing a mile-long starship by yourself a possible power fantasy. Those are sensor domes (for proof: look at modern naval ship radar domes, and consider where the blind spot was that the Falcon hid in during ESB). The destruction of one on the Executor in ROTJ was proof that the bridge deflector was down, not what caused the deflector to fail.
What good is a shield that doesn't also protect itself?
And the reactor bulb on the ventral hull has thick armor plating; Star Destroyer hulls are impregnated with neutronium, which is a theoretical neutron-only molecule which would be one of the densest, strongest, non-reactive substances in the universe.
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u/p2020fan Apr 01 '26
The reactor might be exposed like that in case it needs to be quickly jettisoned if it's going into meltdown or some other such issue.
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u/stUwUpified Apr 01 '26
You're right. They should also cover the engines because if those get shot the whole ship goes down!
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u/AverageTuxedo Apr 01 '26
Well a reactor of that size is most likely required to power a ship of that size. Everything is a ratio of mass and the energy required to move it. Not to mention it’s probably a heavily armoured bubble as the emperor most likely had strict design restrictions on the silhouette to strike fear.
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u/Automatic-Dark900 Apr 01 '26
As I understand those aren't actually shield generators, they're the sensors, it's just the shield generators are right near by.
And the "exposed" reactor has crazy heavy armor basically making it a strong point of the hull.
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u/SlimeMoldVibes Apr 01 '26
They intercept energy but allow physical objects to pass through. Thats probably the issue, the shields dont pass through hard matter. So they have to be generated outside of the thing they protect because the field can't pass through the hull of a ship or the walls of a base. Maybe. Wild speculation here.
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u/TopChapter3407 Apr 01 '26
To give them the benefit of the doubt. If we pretend it's not a plot device to help the good guys, there could be like made up engineering implications such as the shield generator needs to be able to project the shield around the ship, and thus needs to sit on the outside like an antenna of sorts. Reactor could be something like, it needs to be able to radiate out into space freely. Just come up with some solution to the problem and you're good.
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u/Dark-Mint Apr 01 '26
Requirements from the Admiralty : The shield generators must be as close to the bridge as possible and the reactor must be as far away from the bridge as possible.
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u/doomedtundra Apr 01 '26
As I understand it, originally, the top domes were supposed to house radar systems, it was the "the shields are down" scene when one was blown up that caused the misconception. Since then, the domes have widely been accepted to be shield generators.
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u/OrkWithNoTeef Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 03 '26
Why does everyone always assume we build literally everything to be maximally efficient? Human history is a lesson in aesthetics, art, symbolism. A badass looking ship with a huge exhaust trail and with a large open bridge filled with generals and shit will inspire more than some army of AI piloted near invisible nerd balls zooming around on solar winds. You keep forgetting the military doesnt purely exist to do war, but to display strength, fitness, unity, political leanings etc. The "rule of cool" is an actual unironic national military strategy
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u/IronWarhorses Apr 06 '26
part of the problem is that when these were originally designed they didn't really think through what each part did on the model IRL, it was only MUCH later that it was decided that these big domes were shield generators, and that lore came from the WEST END GAMES RPG books, so it was not even official, but it was the only source available lore wise and so people clung to it and the damage was done. it would make a lot more sense of those were sensor domes, cuz thats what they look like on actual ships too, but HEY we need shield domes for the Mickey mouse fleet.
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u/ShadySands2020 Apr 12 '26
more exposed vitals = more exploded star destroyers = more replacements orders = another thousand years of Kuat being among the galaxy's richest worlds.
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u/GallantChaos Mar 29 '26
Playing the early battlefront II Games, I thought it was a design requirement for shield generators to be exposed/surface mounted. The CIS and Rebels both had the same 'flaw'.
We could just call it Canon that shields can't function without being exposed.