EVS Construction Droid

The EVS construction droid, or urban renewal droid, was a massive automated factory used on overdeveloped urban worlds like Coruscant and Bonadan for demolition and reconstruction of entire city blocks. It would tear down old, decrepit buildings and transform them into newer structures.

Description

The EVS stood at forty stories and was nearly the size of a skyscraper. It walked on two massive hydraulic legs with a smaller rear hydraulic leg to support it. In a detailed construction project, an EVS construction droid moved a single step forward every half an hour, though it could move much faster during razing projects. Its head was covered in demolition optic clusters, which scanned the structure in front of it, analyzing the weak points and comparing the architecture to master blueprints kept within its computer core.

An EVS Construction Droid at work

Its two heavy shovel arms were used to demolish unneeded structures. The useful wreckage was then scooped into a mouth located underneath its cylindrical battering ram for recycling, while undesired rubble was placed into storage hoppers for disposal. An EVS unit had hundreds of retractable smaller limbs beneath its chassis, which featured specialized demolition devices, including implosion wrecking balls, plasma cutters, collector trowels, debris nets, and electrical claws.

Within the EVS construction droid's processor mouth, the debris was carried by a conveyer belt into internal molecular furnaces, smelting pods, and an atomic incinerator where useful items were extracted and recycled. Raw materials were also separated and taken to a corresponding factory, which extruded new girders, transparisteel sheets, and blocks of compressed duracrete. These materials were then ejected via the rear of the EVS construction droid and assembled into polished new constructs by hundreds of fabricating arms. The intense heat generated by its internal factories was vented through discharge stacks; the heat was so intense that an EVS unit emitted a faint glow under dark lighting.

The EVS was piloted by an outdated integrated droid brain, which took nearly three days to reprogram and reinitialize once interrupted. Thus, a small skeleton crew was assigned to an EVS unit to supervise the droid and make sure such shutdowns were not a frequent occurrence. They resided within a small command cabin located in its head, and their airspeeders were parked at a small dorsal landing pad.

Operational history

A construction droid at work on Coruscant.

Such droids were created and design by scientists commissioned by Emperor Palpatine for Coruscant during his reign over the galaxy.

In 6.5 ABY, during the New Republic's attempt to retake the planet, members of the elite Rogue Squadron under Wedge Antilles hijacked unit EVS-469 and used it to transport them to a subsidiary computer center, where they sabotaged the planetary defensive shields, thus helping in the New Republic efforts to capture the planet.

Later, construction droids were used to rebuild damaged portions of the planet. During this time, EVS-6962 uncovered a hidden Imperial interrogation center during a routine tear-down assignment under Wedge Antilles.

Appearances

• Shadows of the Empire novel
• X-Wing: Wedge's Gamble
• X-Wing: The Krytos Trap (Mentioned only)
• X-Wing: Isard's Revenge (Mentioned only)
• Jedi Search (First appearance)
• Dark Apprentice (Mentioned only)
• The New Rebellion
• Young Jedi Knights: The Lost Ones (Mentioned only)
• Young Jedi Knights: Delusions of Grandeur

Sources

• The Illustrated Star Wars Universe
• The Jedi Academy Sourcebook
• Shadows of the Empire Sourcebook (Indirect mention only)
• Cynabar's Fantastic Technology: Droids (Indirect mention only)
• Star Wars Encyclopedia
• The Essential Guide to Droids ("EVS Construction Droid")