Torpedo Sphere/Legends

Torpedo Sphere Torpedo Spheres, or Torpedo Platforms, were powerful Imperial siege platforms, essentially miniature Death Stars, that were armed with heavy batteries of proton torpedoes.

Characteristics
Torpedo Spheres were large battlestations, several times the mass of an Imperial-class Star Destroyer. As their name suggests, they had spherical spaceframes, although they were oblate in shape, rather than perfectly circular. Due to their large size, they were equipped only with Class 3 hyperdrives, and they carried a standard crew of 63,275 Navy personnel and 8,540 troops; at least one torpedo sphere was said instead to have had a full crew compliment of 61,245, perhaps representing a post-refit revision.

The main weaponry of each Torpedo Sphere consisted of 500 proton torpedo tubes and 10 turbolaser batteries, organized around the ship's equator. The torpedo tubes tubes were grouped in 120 clusters arranged in several tiers below the hull centerline, with each cluster consisting of four tubes centered around a DER targeting control room; it appears that there was one reserve tube for every six clusters, as each torpedo magazine fed 25 tubes.

The main bridge was situated at the station's upper pole, with a massive viewpane filling the forward bulkhead, offering a spectacular view of the target. An extensive on-board security system was in place, with a network of holocams and sensors supervised from twenty security stations throughout the hull.

A Torpedo Sphere was equipped with a dozen large hangar bays, each normally operating a flight of two or three transport or personnel shuttles&mdash;although each was capable of launching four shuttles simultaneously, and all were connected by lifts to internal bays where additional craft could be stored and serviced. Torpedo spheres did not carry TIE Fighters or defensive batteries, however, and this lack was not entirely compensated for by the Bombard Squadrons which they commanded, as these consisted mainly of light cruisers and pickets.

There was a feeling among senior Navy personnel that they required further reinforcement to operate safely in systems with a hostile naval presence, so much so that Admirals were known to have illegally beefed up their escort screens by transferring ships from other squadrons, without notifying their local Moffs.



Ostensibly, Torpedo Spheres were useful only for the specific purpose of bringing down planetary shields. They took advantage of the fact that planetary shields were not uniform, and experienced anomalies and fluctuations. Using thousands of Dedicated Energy Receptors (DERs), a Torpedo Sphere could find a shield's weak spots.

Although these weak spots were rarely more than 20% less powerful than the rest of the shield, this drop in power was enough for the Torpedo Sphere to work with. Numerous proton torpedoes were focused on a single weak spot, in order to temporarily open up a small hole in the shield. Once a hole was opened, a carefully timed turbolaser blast was used to destroy the shield generator, bringing down an entire section of a planetary shield.

The process of analyzing a shield, bombarding it with torpedoes, and destroying a shield generator was extremely difficult and complicated. Weak spots were rarely more than 6 square meters in area. It took hundreds of technicians to properly coordinate the torpedo tubes. Holes in the shielding usually lasted mere microseconds. Even the location of a shield generator was not immediately apparent. Because full planetary shields could block sensors, the crew of a Torpedo Sphere had to study a shield's power waves in order to discover the location of a shield generator.

Once a generator and weak spot was found, the Torpedo Sphere had to be maneuvered into position so that it was aligned with both of them, allowing it to fire upon the generator with its turbolasers. If the calculations and timing of the attack or the aim of the gunners was just slightly off, the entire process had to be repeated again.

In reality, Torpedo Spheres were also intended to carry out Base Delta Zero operations&mdash;as battle stations rather than true combat warships, they were probably much less expensive to construct and operate than Super Star Destroyers, but they seem to have fallen from favor after the death of Grand Moff Tarkin. Although it was initially projected to assign several to every Sector Group, only half a dozen were known to have been completed, and while they certainly carried awesome firepower, what is known about their operational history does not suggest that they were as effective as their designers had hoped.

History
Similar torpedo platforms dated back to the Clone Wars, predating the development of high-powered beam-weapon technology which was first perfected with Eye of Palpatine, but the term "Torpedo Sphere" most commonly refers to the 1,900m diameter battlestations built by the Loronar Corporation, which Bevel Lemelisk only began to design shortly before the Battle of Yavin, as work on Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin's Death Star neared completion.

One Torpedo Sphere was converted while under construction into a research space station and placed in orbit around the planet Tshindral III, while another was assigned to undergo an extensive refit at Tallaan within only two or three years of its launch&mdash;in the course of which it was sabotaged and destroyed by Justice Action Network operatives. A large torpedo sphere was rammed and destroyed by the commandeered cargo ship Black Ice during an attack on the Rebel base at Fangol.



By the time of the Battle of Endor, one of the survivors was being used defensively to guard the major shipyards at Corellia: a few months after Endor, this Torpedo Sphere distinguished itself at the Battle of Tralus, but it was destroyed when it was rammed by the Super Star Destroyer Aggressor at the end of the engagement. At least two more Torpedo Spheres can be presumed to have been completed for active duty, but nothing is known for sure about their operational history.

At least one Torpedo Sphere presumably served as a testbed for the Two-Wave Gravshock Device, a gravitic "planetbuster" carried within a Torpedo Sphere hull, designed to cause earthquakes and tsunamis on a hostile world; but it is not known whether the gravshock project used newly-built Torpedo Spheres or refitted the devices to existing hulls, nor is it clear if the device remained permanently aboard the ships it was fitted to after its initial deployment.

Appearances

 * Children of the Jedi
 * Black Ice