I don't get the Death Star...

Star Wars fan to the core here. I grew up reading the extended universe in the 90s and still even play Rebellion on PC regularly... I was young enough to love the prequels when they came out. Played Star wars ccg from Decipher instead of magic or pokemon... Disney did us a little dirty but overall I have enjoyed the shows. Andor is probably the pinical of modern star wars, it's right up there with Empire.. anyway I digress. One thing has always irked me.

I don't get the Death Star.

In the Star Wars Universe, you have imperial class star destroyer sized ships with massive tractor beams... if you wanted to destroy a planet it would be a simple task to grab a local asteroid and drop it on a planet slagging the thing.

Destroying a planet is trivial. I always assumed it's sort of a Geneva Agreement type of thing that people don't go around doing that... but if you're willing to use a death star laser to wipe out a planet you don't care about any rules of conflict agreements... you just wiped out a whole planet...

So why is the death star even a thing?

Besides it just being a story and they needed a big bad thing to explode is there really any in universe explanation for it? I don't buy the fear explanation because if you are a cruel enough Empire to wipe out planets you can do it simply enough dropping a rock. Just do that to a few planets then everyone will fear you. You don't need a giant space station to be scary.

So /end rant.. But it has always seemed like the the biggest plot hole to me that no one talks about. Does anyone else feel the same way?

Cheers.