Death Star

In the book Darksaber they take the design of the Death Star but they make it a lot smaller. How come they couldn't make the Death Star smaller and more manuverable?

Probably because bigger is scarier. The Empire wanted to use the Death Star to scare people so the bigger the better.

To scare people they just had to demonstrate the power of the laser. Then the Rebellion would listen to the Empire.

But as Wedge said "Look at the size of that thing!". He wouldn't have been so scared if it had been smaller.

Then the Rebels would all get cocky and end up losing the battle.

The only thing that they used in the book was the weapon, and to move they took ships. So than it was already smaller than in the movie

What we're talking about is: Why didn't the original Death Star use just the weapon?

Because it needed a Hyperdrive and rooms for the Stormtroopers and hangar bays and stuff, it was a BATTLESTATOIN

Well I'm sure the could have added a hyperdrive. But if they wanted hanger bays and room for the stormtroopers then they could bring along extra ships. The original DS was very slow and unmanuverable.

It wasn't a Podracer.
It was meant to scare entire planets and that's why it was so big.

I think the Empire knew what it was doing. We should work on thge basic assumption that the DS was a good shell for the superweapon. It would have been doubly vulnerbale without the station around it.

And not half as scary.

The key is intimidation. If Palpatine had to turn the entire galaxy to rubble, he wouldn't have a galaxy to rule. He wanted a few examples and then just pure control.