Firing Delay

Triggering a monster like this wasn't like pressing the firing stud on a blaster. At optimum it would take fifteen or twenty seconds from the given command to fire until the main beam was ready to be unleashed, and they hadn't gotten close to that yet. Half the time during firing simulations they couldn't balance the phase harmonics enough to shoot the primary beam at all. And even if the magnetic ring was precisely stabilized, all it would take was one of the tributaries warbling so much as a microhertz out of phase, and the others would desynchronize as well. The result would be a feedback explosion along the beam shaft and back to the main reactor that would turn the battle station into an incandescent plasma cloud in less than a single heartbeat, and the Empire thanks your family very much for your sacrifice.

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Star Wars: Death Star Part 1 Chapter 36