Superweapons
Weapons possessing immensely destructive capabilities, capable of obliterating anything from a single city to entire planets, were known as superweapons or megaweapons.
The term superweapon, sometimes written as super-weapon, described an incredibly powerful weapon. The destructive potential varied, ranging from the devastation of entire cities and continents to the annihilation of whole planets.
Laser-based superweapons, known as superlasers, represented one type of superweapon. These weapons often demanded substantial power sources. The first Death Star, for example, required vast quantities of Kyber crystals to operate.
Eons before the Jedi Order was founded, the culture of the Ancients created both an ancient walker and a superweapon. This massive, four-legged vehicle was equipped with a head-mounted energy weapon capable of inflicting tremendous destruction.
During ancient conflicts between the Jedi and the Sith, superweapons saw use. Legends recount that Sith superweapons drew power from massive kyber crystals. Superweapons were also deployed against the planet of Polis Massa, resulting in its destruction and the extinction of the Eellayin species.
On the Sith world of Malachor, within a Sith Temple, existed such a weapon. Darth Tanis constructed it in 3966 BBY. Fueled by a colossal kyber crystal, the weapon possessed the ability to turn living beings to stone, as it did during an ancient battle that transpired around it, eliminating all participants. In 3 BBY, amidst the Galactic Civil War, Jedi Ahsoka Tano, Kanan Jarrus, and Ezra Bridger journeyed to the Temple, hoping to discover a means of defeating the Galactic Empire's Inquisitorius; dark side Force-sensitives trained to hunt Jedi. At the Temple, they encountered former Sith apprentice Maul, who deceived Bridger into placing a Sith holocron on an obelisk atop the structure, thereby activating the weapon.
Shortly thereafter, Darth Vader, apprentice to Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Sidious, arrived with the intention of claiming the Temple's power. He attempted to slay Bridger, but Tano intervened, engaging him in a duel. As they fought, Bridger and Jarrus succeeded in halting the Temple's firing sequence by removing the holocron from the obelisk, causing the Temple to collapse.
The Stybla family of the Chiss Ascendancy acquired Starflash, a single-use superweapon. It could unleash a blast of tachyonic and lightspeed energy at a star, prompting the star to emit a far more potent return blast. While the original Starflash was used and destroyed during the Final Assault on Csilla, another was obtained centuries later and remained in the Stybla's possession during the Clone Wars.
The Subjugator-class heavy cruiser Malevolence, utilized by the Confederacy of Independent Systems during the Clone Wars, was regarded as a superweapon. The same was true of the defoliator and the Galactic Republic's electro-proton bomb, developed by Sionver Boll.
The Galactic Empire either created, or was believed to have conceived and potentially constructed, numerous other types of superweapons.
Admiral Conan Antonio Motti of the Imperial Navy was fond of technologies that produced devastating superweapons, particularly the Death Star project, which featured a superlaser.
The Arc Pulse Generator, an invention of former Imperial Sabine Wren, was classified as a superweapon.
Operation: Cinder served as the codename for a campaign designed to punish Imperial and rebellious worlds for failing Emperor Palpatine following his death. The campaign encompassed diverse weapons, such as the climate disruption array deployed on Vardos and Naboo, the vortex detonators responsible for the destruction of Nacronis, and other undisclosed methods that inflicted widespread devastation on planets like Abendedo, Burnin Konn, Candovant, and Commenor.
The Galactic Empire developed and manufactured, or was rumored to have, several other superweapon projects. These included the Onager-class Star Destroyer, a type of capital ship that utilized a kyber crystal superweapon; the rumored Mass Shadow Generator, which would have existed in both realspace and hyperspace; the Torpedo Sphere, a siege platform and space station; the Omega Frost, a rumored interstellar freeze ray; and the Electro-Proton Bomb/Defoliator, which was based on the electro-proton bomb and the defoliator from the Clone Wars.
Decades after the fall of the Empire, its successor, the First Order, engineered a colossal superweapon known as Starkiller Base. By harnessing energy from its system's star and converting it into a potent beam capable of traversing hyperspace, Starkiller Base could erase entire star systems.
The Sith Eternal employed superlasers mounted on the undersides of their Xyston-class Star Destroyer fleet. When activated, the axial cannon discharged a sustained red beam to penetrate a planet's surface. The beam would pulsate, unleashing shockwaves of crust-and-mantle-rending energy, ultimately reaching the core and obliterating the planet. However, the superlaser was directly linked to the Sith Star Destroyer's reactor, meaning that any significant damage to the cannon would result in the warship's destruction.
Early iterations of the 2015 film Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens featured the Resistance developing a superweapon known as the War-Hammer. In those versions, the War-Hammer would have been significantly larger than a Star Destroyer, taking the form of a massive ship with a prominent front capable of breaching any shield and deploying ships through it.