Star Destroyers were produced by Kuat Drive Yards, later Kuat-Entralla Engineering, and serve as "the signature vessel of the fleet" for the Galactic Empire, the First Order, and the Sith Eternal in numerous published works including film, television, novels, comics, and video games.

During the battle, Imperial Star Destroyers prove vulnerable to fleets of starfighters flown by skilled Rebel pilots, who exploit the ships' exposed bridges and deflector shield generators to cause damage.

Using then-current technology and naval vessels as a reference, the ship would weigh 4.44 billion kilograms, generate 146.5 gigawatts of power, and its engines would produce a combined total thrust of 3.5 million newtons.

However getting the parts into space to construct the Star Destroyer would require an additional $44.4 trillion USD in launch costs, suggesting that asteroid mining and refining technologies would have to be developed first to make it more economical.

[22][23] For The Empire Strikes Back, George Lucas wanted Darth Vader's new flagship, Executor, to be huge and to play a greater role in the film.

[4] Its command tower, rising above the ship's technoscape on a thick stalk, is a standard model found on other Star Destroyers – including a pair of geodesic domes containing communication transceivers, sensors and deflector shield projectors – and allows for an unobstructed view of the battlefield.

[25] At least twelve of these vessels were built by the Empire, including the Executor, Annihilator, Ravager and Arbitrator, but the exact number is unknown thanks to Imperial propaganda and black budgets.

During this attack an A-wing piloted by Arvel Crynyd crashes into the command bridge, destroying the main navigation complex and causing the vessel to lose control.

[17] Rhett Allain, an associate professor of physics at Southeastern Louisiana University, examined the death of the Executor in a Star Wars Day-themed article for Wired.

For the crew at the front of the ship, this would result in a centripetal acceleration of 39 G.[26] If a model of the Executor was built to scale and placed hovering over New York City, it would cast a shadow over the island of Manhattan.

[30] An advertisement agency's list of 153 alternatives included Starbase Malevolent, Black Coven, Haphaestus VII, and Cosmocurse;[30] ultimately, the toy was labeled "Darth Vader's Star Destroyer".

[35] These massive ship require a relatively small crew to operate as a deliberate feature compensating for the fact that the Separatists can produce battle droids faster than the Republic can grow clone troopers.

[33] As a true warship, the Venator-class can feed nearly its entire reactor output (which at maximum power consumes 40,000 tons of fuel per second) into its heavy turbolasers to devastating effect.

[33] As a carrier, the Star Destroyer can rapidly deploy hundreds of starfighters, including ARC-170s, V-wings, Z-95 Headhunters and Jedi interceptors, from a .5 km (0.31 mi)-long dorsal flight deck.

[35] Thanks to their superior firepower, the Venator-class has a strong advantage against Separatist warships, and a small flotilla of attack cruisers can easily blast through the deflector shields of a Trade Federation Battleship.

[33] At the Battle of Coruscant, over a thousand attack cruisers are deployed to defend the planet,[37] one of which (the Star Destroyer Guarlara) delivers a devastating barrage to the Invisible Hand at point-blank range.

[22][39][40] For the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show, noted modder Sander van der Velden created a custom-built PC made to look like a Venator Star Destroyer.

[48] Resurgent-class Star Destroyers are described in background literature as a clear violation of the treaties between the New Republic and the First Order, measuring at 2,916 m (9,567 ft) in length and with a crew of 19,000 officers and 55,000 enlisted personnel.

While evoking the traditional Imperial-class Star Destroyer, the Resurgent-class incorporates a number of fixes to the former's design flaws, including a less exposed command bridge and larger fighter complement.

This forced Ren to transfer his command over to a new Resurgent-class Star Destroyer, the Steadfast, and reduced Hux to a junior member of the First Order Supreme Council.

Described as the command ship for Supreme Leader Snoke, it was stated to be 60 kilometers wide, making it significantly larger than any previous Super Star Destroyer.

[53] Director Rian Johnson came up for the idea of basing the Supremacy on a flying wing, picking the final exterior look from concept art created by design supervisor Kevin Jenkins.

[57][58] The vessel also possesses an industrial capacity that would rival most planets, with asteroid mining complexes, foundries, production lines, research labs and training centers.

[59] Upon the first reveal of the Supremacy, B. Alan Orange noted that, despite the ship's unique design, it still retained a familiar shape which immediately identified it as belonging to the First Order.

[60] Corey Larson of Screen Rant believed that, regardless of the film's wider reputation, the introduction of the Supremacy and it's subsequent destruction during The Last Jedi represented one of the coolest additions to the franchise from the Star Wars sequel trilogy.

While crediting Rian with not introducing another Death Star-like weapon, it still showed that the First Order, like the Empire before it, was obsessed with equating size with power and creating "unbeatable" superweapons which are eventually destroyed.

Notable for its massive size and overwhelming firepower compared to its fore-bearers; a single Imperial-class ship is capable of singlehandedly taking on a fleet of enemy vessels or "reducing the surface of a planet to a slag" (known as "Base Delta Zero"), and its mere presence is often enough to deter rebellion.

[69] Though the Imperial Navy also has smaller capital ships like Nebulon-B Escort Frigates and CR90 Corvettes (the films show these vessels being used exclusively by the Rebel Alliance), Imperial-class Star Destroyers are usually the default choice for frontline deployments.

At the Battle of Endor the Rebel Alliance captured two Imperial-class Star Destroyers and added them to the New Republic fleet; they serve alongside Mon Calamari Cruisers in General Han Solo's task force as told in the X-wing series of novels and Dark Empire comics.

[70] Although the New Republic eventually upgrades its starfleet with newer ship types, the Imperial-class Star Destroyer remains in service well into the New Jedi Order era and fights during the Yuuzhan Vong War.