Thinking about the death star in rogue one in comparison to ANH kind of reveals how overkill the death star's energy weapons are, like, if you have an energy weapon that can damage a planet badly enough to permanently destroy its habitability and even orbital stability (will happen if you make a massive crater) then you have already destroyed a planet, what do you need to vaporize it for lmao
It’s about sending a message
One of the cute parts about Star Wars is you have this entire army of officer-bureaucrats self-justifying all this stuff with the Tarkin Deterrence Doctrine, the benefits of military centralization, etc, and then you go to the actual source for it all in the Emperor and he just laughs and says he did it because it was More Evil this way before electrocuting you for fun.
