Star Wars/Super Star Destroyer Talk

With regards to length, games use something on the order of 6 kilometres. Where is the 17 km figure coming from?

On starwars.com, the height (not the length) is quoted as 12.8 kilometres. 17 kilometres sounds like a reasonable guess for its length. However, the games may use a significantly different figure. Could somebody please boot up X-Wing Alliance to check what figures it uses? --Robert Merkel

[Here]. This guy analyzes it in more detail than I could ever stomach. Also note that only the movies are canon: if any information in them conflicts with anything else, even "official" sources like the games, the movies always take precedence. In the movies, the SSDs are between 11 and 12 times longer than the Imperator-class SDs, which we already know to be about a mile (1.6 km) long. Other methods, including judging by the bridge towers and measuring the actual models, confirm the 17.6-km figure. -- Xaonon

The idea of "movies are canon" is quite interesting. We are talking about a fictional creation here, and saying that the Executor is of a certain size because that's what the movies appear to indicate gives the impression that the movies reflect some actual universe whereas the games are taking liberties with this "real world". To me, it seems more accurate to say that the movies (which are considered "canon" by Lucasarts and some fans) portray the SSD's as about 17 kilometres long. Some games based in the Star Wars universe portray the SSD's as significantly smaller.

Of course, this is all incredibly anal. The real point of the SSD in the movies was to make the already really big and evil-looking ISD's look puny and meek by comparison. Exact measurements are kinda irrelevant. --Robert Merkel

I know, but that doesn't make a very satisfying "in-story" explanation. Any diverse fictional setting is bound to have contradictions, but fans like their story universe to be internally consistent. The resolution is to have rules to keep straight on what is and isn't certain. Star Wars, Star Trek, even The Lord of the Rings has lists of which sources are and are not canon. There are further rules as well, such as the one that newer canon material overrides older, to improve the consistency even more. -- Xaonon