Hey all! New to this sub, sorry if this is a repost.
Why do star destroyers not have big ol laser cannons? It seems like the huge fleet ships only have small laser batteries for close defense? Why not bigger guns for shooting other big ships?
Posted Dec 2, 2019, 4:08 PM UTC
They have plenty of fire power. https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Imperial_I-class_Star_Destroyer
Despite their name, that's not really the purpose of Star Destroyers. They're more like transport ships.
It's the same concept as most naval ships. An aircraft carrier is going to have some guns, but not as many as the smaller destroyer. Most of the defenses for an aircraft carrier will come from deploying the aircraft to defend the ship, or a fleet of other ships that follow along with it.
This. Star destroyers were ment to be parked in a star system ready to unload troops at any given moment. Or provide orbital strikes from above.
They probably wouldn't have had much use for them. Nobody was fighting the Empire with capital ships. ISDs were mostly troop transports and TIE carriers. They still had tons of firepower, just not in the form of a single giant cannon.
Would take too much energy to... something or other.
Dreadnoughts were the ones with the big guns (i.e - Mandator IV from TLJ), who were much slower than ISDs and didn’t hold off well against small craft. Star Destroyers were generally used to support these larger craft and hold snubfighters.
Uh... they are literally designed for capital ship combat. Their only armaments are turbolasers and ion cannons.