Large vessels like the Procurator were used for generations by private defensive fleets fielded by rich, industrialized star sectors.
It spawned a series of increasingly large warship designs and went on to have many different models in its own production line. The first modern design that would be lumped into the Super Star Destroyer category was the Procurator-class Star Battlecruiser, built two centuries before the Clone Wars. However, by the centuries prior to the Clone Wars, heavy warships had gained prominence again. These new designs were armed with better weapons and more powerful shields than the older battlecruisers and battleships.
They became obsolete at some point after 3000 BBY, when fleet doctrine shifted to groups of smaller-scale cruisers that combined their firepower and were more maneuverable. Large ships fought in the Alsakan Conflicts and the Old Sith Wars. įor tens of thousands of years, heavy warships were part of the Republic Navy's strategy for space combat. " From Super Star Destroyers to torpedo spheres, it has been nearly impossible to overestimate the amount of destructive force available to the average Moff or Sector Group Commander" ―Arhul Hextrophon, on the Empire's obsession with super weapons. They were good expressions of the Tarkin Doctrine, which argued that galactic peace could be achieved by developing the ability to project overwhelming firepower against any enemy, rendering all resistance futile before it even began. Īs command ships, SSDs like the Executor-class were capable of projecting power across entire Oversectors and served as command ships for galaxy-spanning campaigns. Super Star Destroyers were on par with or larger than most other navies' ships-of-the-line, like the Trade Federation's Lucrehulk-class battleships or the Subjugator-class heavy cruisers of the CIS. Like most other starship production lines, different ships within the same class were often subject to different specifications in terms of armament, crew and support vessels, based on their intended focus and roles. The largest known models were usually fitted with extensive command and control suites which could handle far more naval forces than previous command stations, such as the Old Republic's Republic command ships of the Krath Holy Crusade or the Inexpugnable-class tactical command ships of the Mandalorian Wars. One of the leaders of the Rebel Alliance, Mon Mothma, admitted when learning this that it would pose a dilemma if the Rebel Alliance did manage to capture one intact: they wouldn't have enough personnel to operate it. In large part due to their immense size, Super Star Destroyers required a crew of at least 280,000 to operate. In at least one ship classification system, SSDs were regarded as large enough to be counted as space stations rather than regular starships.
All the known models were at least several kilometers long in order to support their increasingly heavy power generators and armaments. The term "Super Star Destroyer" described some of the largest warships ever designed and fielded, and covered various warship classes that served primarily as command ships.