The vessel was built to superficially look like the Starcrusher, but was completely hollow, with few functioning systems. It carried multiple escape pods for emergency situations, had little real life-support and a minimal amount of power to make hyperspace jumps.
When the Republic sent several cruisers to stage an attack on the Separatist fuel tanker Aurora, the decoy arrived to present itself as a target for the infiltrating Jedi.
The decoy vessel was successfully infiltrated, but the skeleton crew present fled in escape pods and sent the copy vessel on a crash course with a nearby star.
In the confusion, Lieutenant Daan of the Starcrushers crew was left behind and begrudgingly helped the Jedi come up with an escape plan. The real Starcrusher entered the system to pick up the skeleton crew. Anakin Skywalker entered the battleship in his interceptor and destroyed its reactor. The dead battleship was then pulled into the decoy vessel, which had become magnetized by the Jedi wiring buttresses aboard the "Starcrusher" and magnetizing the hull. Both ships fell into the gravity well of the star, destroying them and killing the Starcrushers crew.