Construction
The construction of a Death Star battle station must have been a phenomenal feat of engineering and logistics. A quantity of metal equivalent to the mass of a small moon would have to be mined and refined, and eventually brought together. No mere handful of planets could supply enough raw materials and components for a Death Star. The fact that the Galactic Empire was able to commit to several such undertakings without any noticeable effect on its economy signifies of the enormous scope of that institution and its territory. This would only be possible with something like the Empire's twelve million inhabited systems [according to Dark Empire] and the roughly tens of thousands of times more numerous uninhabited but potentially exploitable systems of a spiral galaxy.

Even with the benefit of droid labour, the amount of human and alien effort involved is almost incomprehensible. Without automation and droid labour, the assembly of a Death Star within a year would probably require trillions of technical overseers. To finish a battle station within a reasonable time using mere billions or millions of living sentient beings implies very sophisticated automation.

Massive automated construction droids performed much of the work, similar to those lumbering machines which continually demolish and extrude buildings in Imperial City [Jedi Search, ITW:SWT]. The irregular, fractal-like fringes of the incomplete Death Star II suggest that construction is locally organised and performed by self-replicating automata. The station's feathery, fractal growth provides the machines with a maximum possible working area, keeping mutual obstruction to a minimum. Whenever a feathery promontory is built beyond a certain size, a newly made constructor can be set to work there. On the largest scales, the automata must conform their work to a grand plan. On the smallest, human scales, sentient overseers might check the installation of local life-support, power and computer systems [ANH novel refers to construction crews who left the corridor near trash compactor].

The Hutt Clans' Darksaber private Death Star was primarily built by taurill, semi-intelligent hairy four-armed simians who possessed a communal awareness and owed allegiance to Durga the Hutt. Thus they serve as a living substitutes for Imperial construction droids. The taurill life cycle must be short enough for rapid population doubling to keep pace with the available construction work. Although the taurill were a well-coordinated and dispensable workforce, their poor understanding of the technology and the low quality of taurill workmanship vexed designer Bevel Lemelisk.