During his reign, Palpatine had always wanted to show off his power; he did so in the form of the two Death Stars. When his clone was revived, he once again sought to build a huge craft to strike fear into the galaxy. So the Eclipse was born. This ship was a brand new class of Destroyer. It was an Eclipse-Class Super Destroyer, and measured a massive 17.5 kilometres long, over twice the size of the Executor and over ten times that of an Imperial-Class Destroyer.
The Eclipse had a solid black hull, and its main use was to scare the enemy into submission. This tactic often worked, but it had enough weapons to make sure that if the enemy were not scared, they would be completely wiped out. In fact its shields and hull were so strong that the destroyer could ram ships without even so much as a dent on its surface.
The ships was a feat of engineering, and rivaled the Death Star in terms of manpower. On board the might behemoth was a crew of over 700,000 beings and 150,000 troops. Five prefabricated garrison bases and 100 AT-ATs allowed the Eclipse to stage massive ground assaults.
In space, the Destroyer had immense superiority. Five hundred heavy laser cannons and 550 turbolasers allowed the ship to fight entire New Republic fleets on its own. Fifty squadrons of Interceptors and eight squadrons of TIE bombers gave the ship massive protection against any enemy starfighters foolish enough to try to engage the black Destroyer.
The crew size was not the only similarity the Eclipse had to the Death Star. At the very front of the ship sat the Destroyer’s main weapon; a superlaser. Disappointingly for Palpatine, this superlaser had only two-thirds of the power of the Death Star’s, meaning it was only able to crack a planet’s crust rather than wipe it off the face of the galaxy in one shot. Shame really.
Thanks to Luke and Leia, the Eclipse was stopped over the Pinnacle Moon. Brother and sister Jedi joined forces, and engulfed Palpatine in life energy. This stunned the Emperor, and made him lose control of the massive Force storms he had created. The twins escaped, and looked back as the Eclipse, and everybody on board, was torn apart by the out-of-control Force storms.
Maybe Vader was right; the power to destroy a planet, or in this case crack its crust, is indeed insignificant compared to the power of the Force. How ironic.