 loss of compact technology occured. no significant developments in large-scale sheilds; death star more or less as big as they get. While fighting the second death star, nobody even tried to overwhelm the groundside station via orbital bombardment, suggesting a very strong sheild. But during the battle with the first death star, a single shot from a fighter is able to cause an explostion in an occupied corridor, and fighters destroy a number of turrets on the surface of the death star. Substantial advancement? If so, why didn't the emporer have backup sheilds installed on the death star already? I conclude that to make a wars sheild strong, you have to attach it to a planet or moon, and then protect any object OTHER than the planet or moon it's attached to, because you need something to dump the vibrations into. (maybe the harmonics will always be resonant with the object you're trying to sheild or something. point is, that type of sheild cannot be put onto a ship). meanwhile, small-scale sheilds were, quite simply, lost. Sheilded droids? poof. personal sheilds? Never seen in the entire series, as far as I can tell. Those sheilds used by the gungans? poof. 0. Industrial technlogies and capacity (goes down the drain) At first, it looks like industrial technologies improve throughout-after all, the empire uses ever bigger ships as time goes on! But it's an illusion. An illusion created by switching to ever weaker materials as the machinary and infrastructure falls apart behind the scenes. If star destroyers were built of the same material as the typical republic era ship, they should have roughly twice as much maneuverability as they actually do. If they were built out of a stronger material, they should have even more maneuverability. They don't. They're sitting ducks for f\*n asteroids...which is yet anoter sign they're made of substandard materials. As for the second death star being bigger than the second? Rougly speaking, that big death star would have been about 0 or 0 small when finished, and had the material for 0 or two small death stars already present. Assuming that industrial capacity remained the same, the emperor could've easily lured the rebels to an unfinished "death star" with only enough firepower to dent another death star (which is presumably sufficient to destroy rebel ships in one shot each), left ANYBODY in charge of it, then showed up with the REAL death star if the original plan went south. Or even just to panick the rebels. But he didn't. I conclude that he didn't...because he couldn't; he had to use a less efficient set of materials for the weapons, because the empire had run out of supplies. with less efficient materials, an even bigger death star was required just to house the weapon. before it finished, the tools started breaking. Point is, the industrial capacity of the empire was pushed to the limits to maintain an illusion of effectiveness, but wound up collapsing around the emporer. 