The Falcon is a "go fast boat". Serious, look up the term, as it is exactly what you would expect in a smuggling ship.

Han was / is a smuggler. You need a fast boat to get out of trouble.

The Hyperdrive is what made it the fastest.

The hot shot pilot casually flying through an asteroid field to avoid TIE fighters is something else

Bootlegger. Pirate. Smuggler. Scoundrel. Liar.

So when does Han get the Boba Fett treatment and we see a Scum YT-1300 with a pre-ANH Solo pilot?

Fat Scum Han with 3 Binayre Z-95s VS Fat Rebel Han with his 3 z-95s. Epic.

never

han is slimey, a swindler, a smuggler, a scoundrel

but the only kind of scum he is is rebel scum

Han Solo is a scoundrel, a thief, and a liar.

Don't forget, he was also smuggler of illegal goods including the illegal drug spice.

The Spice must flow!

It's very simple: Do we ever see the ship outrun any other ships? Even when fleeing exploding death stars?

Anyone wanna give me a primer on how hyperspace stuff is supposed to work in SW? It's one element of the lore I've never looked it.

Can you jump from any point to any point? If so, what exactly are "hyperspace lanes" supposed to offer?

Is there a maximum travel distance, or would you often have to perform multiple smaller jumps?

Can you smash into stuff while you're hyperspacin'?

Do hyperspace drives requires a different type of fuel from sublight engines?

"The Kessel Run" skirts the Maul. A series or cluster of Black holes. Taking a safe route around the Maul means more parsecs traveled.

Han looked at death, then shot death in the face FIRST! HAN SOLO ALWAYS SHOOTS FIRST!

Naboobo2000

Anyone wanna give me a primer on how hyperspace stuff is supposed to work in SW? It's one element of the lore I've never looked it.

Can you jump from any point to any point? If so, what exactly are "hyperspace lanes" supposed to offer?

Is there a maximum travel distance, or would you often have to perform multiple smaller jumps?

Can you smash into stuff while you're hyperspacin'?

Do hyperspace drives requires a different type of fuel from sublight engines?

Well all of the EU stuff is now non-cannon until it gets lifted into canon by some post-overhaul import. That removes some of the weirder and more inconsistent bits. For example, I think there was a race introduced that lived in Hyperspace but with everything overhauled, it's back to being an empty void. I don't think you can have a collision in hyperspace.

In theory you can go from any point to any point, yes. So why "hyperlanes" and specific routes? The answer to this is that the maths is very complicated and you need to factor in the gravitation of various bodies in your path. These cast "mass shadows" into hyperspace which could wreak havoc. In fact, that's how intredictors work - they create an artificial mass shadow in hyperspace that forces you to drop back into normal space. Anyway, not only does calculating a route take time whilst your navicomputer struggles through all the complications, but the movement of astrological bodies, uncharted planets, all that stuff, makes it harder and sometimes impossible to chart a route between two exact points in one go because you don't know enough about what's between them, so you end up making shorter jumps as you go. Thus the value of hyperlanes - pre-calculated, stable routes that last for a very long time. I mean maybe the Permian Way oscillates very slightly over a couple of years due to that binary system that orbits through it, but this is either documented and known as part of the "map" or you just pick up updates at star ports automatically and keep updated. A navicomputer is more than only a device for making the hyperspace calculations. When you dock somewhere, typically your ship will update the port computers with asteroids encountered, gravitational drift... Whilst in turn picking up the same updates that others have uploaded. Thus known routes, from the great hyperlanes to the little two-system commutes, form this network of journeys ready for you to travel along. If you're going through unexplored space, then you're typically doing little hops. Go somewhere you're reasonably confident is safe, stop for a look around and pick up data on the stars and planets in the surrounding ten light-years or whatever through observation and work out your next safe stop, and repeat.

You CAN do unusual things in hyperspace, things that others would disapprove of or think of as mad. In a Rebels episode, they realise they have a tracker on their ship and because they're already in hyperspace there's nothing they can do about it. So they decide to separate the daughter ship which attaches to the parent ship IN HYPERSPACE! Everyone thought it was a terrible idea except that no-one could think of a better one. So Kanen and Ezra took the daughter ship and disengaged it and took it out of hyperspace to a nearby system whilst the main ship got away (the tracker was on the daughter ship). Let's just say that the separation was bumpy to say the least.

Another one would be where Anakin decided to hyperspace right under the wing of an enemy flagship. But that was an Anakin special. Do not attempt if you are not the hero of a six-movie sequence. IIRC there was another case where he almost killed his entire squadron when he nearly came out of hyperspace in a sun. Though I think I'm getting that confused with another incident.

My fan theory for how it's possible to blockade an entire planet, is that there are standard departure points from a planet and whilst it's possible for a ship to leave from somewhere else, it takes time to make the adjustments to your calculations. So if you can keep them moving (by chasing them around with Tie-Fighters) then they keep having to make minor calculation adjustments and hopefully you catch them before they're able to make a jump. No-one likes doing higher mathematics whilst being shot at!

Anyway, hope that is of interest. Remember a lot of this stuff got reset with the shelving of the EU. The above is based on canon sources and FFG's RPGs.

Replying rather than editing because the editing on this forum gets messed up in this browser. (I with they would fix this and the way quoting often doesn't work).I said I didn't think you could have a collision in Hyperspace. I meant between ships. I'm not sure what would happen if you piloted a ship into a mass shadow. The ship safety systems auto drop you back into real space. I suppose if you disabled them and flew into it you could be torn apart by the forces in there. But I'm not sure that's ever been actually stated in canon. I wish I could recall which Clone Wars episode it was where they nearly hit a star.

There's also a region on the edge of the galaxy called Wild Space. There's some kind of weird distortion which makes it extremely hard to navigate through. There could be all sorts of things on the other side. It's unmapped and getting to it (and back) has a significant chance of never being seen again simply due to the distortion in hyperspace. The hypothesis is that its the consequence of some terrible weapon in some long ago war.

It's mentioned in a couple of places that if you find a good new stable hyperspace route, you can sell it for quite a bit of money. Or, you could just keep it for trade advantage. Smugglers trade in small, little known routes that help them keep one step ahead of the authorities. Though these routes tend to be risky, unstable or just plain dangerous. The big hyperlanes are like massive motorways. Then there are hundreds of thousands of little routes that are more like B roads (in UK terminology). And then you get smuggler routes that are little lanes or winding routes filled with pot-holes. Because if they were any better, the smuggler would probably just sell them to the authorities and make a fortune.

I've done my own share of figuring this matter out, and - with the Essential Atlas as my primary guide, I pretty much agree with what knasserII said. That's certainly the principle that I built my nav computer around.

All that said, I've been reading Tarkin by James Luceno. It's a phenomenal book, which re-canonizes much of the Essential Atlas' basic outline of the galaxy, as well as certain systems.

However, it also mentions things like hyperspace beacons, which I've thought about as being ancient and obsolete technology. However, Luceno takes the navicomputer concept that knasserII is talking about and refers to it as new technology, with a lot of older ship still operating with the hyperspace beacons.

So, there's some room for confusion about this issue.

It's very simple: Do we ever see the ship outrun any other ships? Even when fleeing exploding death stars?

Well, he outran the Death Star . . . does that count?

Except that time with the tractor beam.

it's also possible han was full of ****, got his reward for helping rescue lea, pimped the **** out of the falcon, came back just in time to pimp slap old man Vader, and had a super spruced up freighter for the other two movies

But then Lando says: " You know, that ship's saved my life quite a few times. She's the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy! "

Exactly! And I believe everything Lando say...

Hold on!

So, when Han meets Luke and tells him that the Milenium Falcon is super fast and "made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs" guess what? He was full of it.

Here's why:

Han Solo is a scoundrel, a thief, and a liar. The Falcon breaks down almost every time they take off. Chewie spends weeks fixing the ship while they are hanging out on Hoth, and it's still beat to crap when they get to Cloud City.

The Milenium Falcon is a slow, outdated, worn down, piece of crap when pieces added on to an already crappy generic frieghter. I get that we want the Falcon to be a glorious ship, but are we really gullible enough to take Han at his word? I'm not.

he's trying to see how much he can try to scam the tatooine country bumpkins out of their money. that is why.

The idea in eu behind Han measuring the kessel run in parsecs is that he claimed to have "braved the black holes near kessel" and blazed a new path that was shorter not safer.

A very neat article on this http://www.tor.com/2014/12/08/star-wars-how-fast-is-the-millennium-falcon/

Men don't brag about there machinery unless they know they can back it up

Aha. Ha. Hehe. AHAHAHA!

Sorry.

I'm a man. I know lots of other men. Very few of them are even capable of being honest about what their machinery can do. Chiefly because even if it is mechanically capable, they usually aren't skilled enough to wring that kind of performance out of it. And if you ever call them on it, they might not show up. And if they do and their gear doesn't perform as they exaggerate it to, they blame the gear (even when it's exponentially more likely to be their fault than the equipment's fault).

IOW, the Falcon might be theoretically capable of ".5 past lightspeed" (whatever that means), but the real question is whether or not Han and Chewie have the skill to take advantage of it.

After having read the maths on it, though, I'm going to go with the "speed of plot". There's absolutely no reason to make anything go any faster or slower than it needs to for the plot. And it fits best with the Star Wars universe. (Having absolute values for speed and distance might be helpful in a competitive game played on a galactic scale, but are not hugely relevant for your average games of X-Wing/Armada, Imperial Assault, or Edge/Age/Force. Or even something like The Old Republic .)

Men don't brag about there machinery unless they know they can back it up

Aha. Ha. Hehe. AHAHAHA!

Sorry.

I'm a man. I know lots of other men. Very few of them are even capable of being honest about what their machinery can do. Chiefly because even if it is mechanically capable, they usually aren't skilled enough to wring that kind of performance out of it. And if you ever call them on it, they might not show up. And if they do and their gear doesn't perform as they exaggerate it to, they blame the gear (even when it's exponentially more likely to be their fault than the equipment's [/i].)

If they don't back up there words with actions then there not men

Han showed up

Men don't brag about there machinery unless they know they can back it up

Aha. Ha. Hehe. AHAHAHA!

Sorry.

I'm a man. I know lots of other men. Very few of them are even capable of being honest about what their machinery can do. Chiefly because even if it is mechanically capable, they usually aren't skilled enough to wring that kind of performance out of it. And if you ever call them on it, they might not show up. And if they do and their gear doesn't perform as they exaggerate it to, they blame the gear (even when it's exponentially more likely to be their fault than the equipment's [/i].)

If they don't back up there words with actions then there not men

Han showed up

I must have missed that. Who did Han race? When did he race them? What is the source (book, movie, TV show)?

Han never proved that the Falcon was the fastest ship or even one of the fastest ships in the galaxy. All he did was haul a hermit and a farmer from one world to another, without any reason to suspect that the Empire was going to pursue them.

Men don't brag about there machinery unless they know they can back it up

Aha. Ha. Hehe. AHAHAHA!

Sorry.

I'm a man. I know lots of other men. Very few of them are even capable of being honest about what their machinery can do. Chiefly because even if it is mechanically capable, they usually aren't skilled enough to wring that kind of performance out of it. And if you ever call them on it, they might not show up. And if they do and their gear doesn't perform as they exaggerate it to, they blame the gear (even when it's exponentially more likely to be their fault than the equipment's [/i].)

If they don't back up there words with actions then there not men

Han showed up

I must have missed that. Who did Han race? When did he race them? What is the source (book, movie, TV show)?

Han never proved that the Falcon was the fastest ship or even one of the fastest ships in the galaxy. All he did was haul a hermit and a farmer from one world to another, without any reason to suspect that the Empire was going to pursue them.

"Well you can forget about your problems with those imperial slugs. I told you we'd out run them"

"Don't everybody thank me at once"

It's easy to outrun somebody at sublight speeds by going faster than the speed of light.

ISDs have Hyperdrive to

Now, "being on the other side of the galaxy by now" from a, what, two hours after evading the Avenger ? is impressive.

And we take that literally. They just mean "They could be anywhere within 2 hours (rather fast) hyperspace flight by now, which is an impossibly vast space to handily search, and by the time they had done that it could be at the other side of the galaxy." Colloquial shorthand should not be taken literally.

Also, the ANH script says that Han is lying.

Yeah! I didn't realize this was actually in the script. I always thought Lucas had screwed up and didn't realize parsecs was a distance measurement, but the script seems to indicate that he was full of it and Ol' Ben knew it.

I believe it suggested Ben did not believe him, but even he didn't get it right. Remember he said "If she is even half as fast as he says she is..." (or something along those lines), so Obi Wan also made the distance=speed mistake. This should primarily be put down to George and the other writers just plucking space jargon from their heads and putting it down on the page. Subsequent EU stuff has tried to explain this away. I just go with the entire exchange basically meaning: "Han Solo says his ship is improbably fast. Obi Wan thinks he is talking ****, but feels that he has a ship that will do the job regardless." Misuses of obscure terminology should not be taken literally (other sci fi examples include shooting an "event horizon" of a "quantum singularity".... *shudders* Voyager science fails).

Even if the script said Han was lying in ANH, that doesn't mean the idea translated on screen. Lots of things changed through the creation of the movies. For example, notice how Obi-Wan and Vader use both hands in their duel on the Death Star? The idea was that lightsabers had so much raw energy it was hard to control, requiring two hands to swing, which is why their duel is so lethargic, like two geriatrics swinging around giant wet sausages. Yeah, that **** went our the window the very next movie. Luke and Vader were doing one handed Jackie Chan bull**** flips and ****.

Still more subdued than the prequel films... and to be fair, they do primarily use them two handed, just occasionally use them otherwise. And to be fair I think the main reason the Episode 4 fight is so lethargic is because you have a pensioner fighting a guy who can't see properly out of his suit, rather than any particularly well thought through ideas of how lightsabers worked. Remember, Luke holds it on one hand when he first ignites it in Ben's home, and handles it easily enough, Yeah, he wouldn't hold it like that in a fight, but it certainly wasn't trying to leap out of his hand or anything. The second hand primarily seems to be for power and control, not to stop the thing waving around in your hand due to the unleashed energies.

Anyone wanna give me a primer on how hyperspace stuff is supposed to work in SW? It's one element of the lore I've never looked it.

Can you jump from any point to any point? If so, what exactly are "hyperspace lanes" supposed to offer?

Is there a maximum travel distance, or would you often have to perform multiple smaller jumps?

Can you smash into stuff while you're hyperspacin'?

Do hyperspace drives requires a different type of fuel from sublight engines?

From my examinations of Star Wars stuff hyperspace makes less sense than the Warp in 40k, which involves plunging into a hellish alternate dimension beset by storms and currents generated by the emotions of sentient beings. Genuinely. There are some general indicators of how it might work, but then something comes along and breaks it. This is because it primarily works by what the plot requires at any particular point.

According to the stuff I have read and seen it would appear you can enter hyperspace at any point, as long as it is a certain minimum distance from any gravity well (ie, not too close to planets, but still quite close). This does question what the point of hyperspace lanes (never mentioned in the films, from what I remember) actually offer, but the suggestion is that the information on these is generally more up to date, and so you can get the data reliably for calculating jumps easily, and they are usually clear of any nasty surprises.

There doesn't appear to be any particular maximum travel distance, except that imposed by consumables (ie, you can only fly as far as your fuel and food will last). It doesn't appear to work like Battlestar Galactica's jump drive, for example.

While objects do not appear to exist in hyperspace while they in real space, they are said to leave a "mass shadow", which can be highly destructive to objects in hyperspace if run into (doesn't say what happens in realspace if this occurs, but it would appear nothing from what I can tell). However, there may be a minimum size before these become an issue. Regardless, these are the major things that hyperspace routes are designed to avoid. As an extra precaution ships are usually set up to have an alarm of oncoming objects and to drop out of hyperspace if about to hit (though it seems that at least on occasion the stress caused by an unplanned exit can seriously damage a ship).

Fuel? No idea.

As said, hyperspace makes no sense. Why? Not because you would appear to want hyperspace lanes when they don't appear to be necessary. No, it is because travel time makes no sense. According to the stuff published hyperdrives are measured in multipliers, ie a Point 5 (or 0.5) hyperdrive like the Millenium Falcon, multiplies a standard travel time by 0.5, ie divides it by 2. A x1 drive will take the standard time, while a x2 drive will take the normal time. Ok, yes, that is all fine. Faster engines means less travel time. Ok, all well and good. However, then we get told that some routes are quicker... ok, the data is kept up to date so it is easier to navigate, that is all fine. With more accurate data maybe you can shave a little distance off your route, making a shorter distance covered, which means less time taken to travel too. Fine. But then it appears some distances take less time to travel than others even if you take that into account... now, this is fine in the Warp of 40k, as there are meant to be actual currents and becalmed areas of space which act just like actual sea. However, hyperspace is never stated to have such a thing. This means that you will find, depending on the areas of space, a x2 hyperdrive might in a straight line go fast than a x0.5 drive in a different... stickier bit of space. Which means that all hyperdrives have an unbelievably fast (or even infinite) maximum speed... but faster ones go that faster speed more often somehow? Or they some how divide infinity by a larger amount? Or is the real limiting factor the calculations provided by your computer... but then what do hyperdrive multipliers actually do?

When running a Star Wars game I just gave up on this and went "a really short journey takes most of a day, a normal short journey takes a few days, and normal journey probably takes a week or so... multiply this by the hyperdrive multiplier. Or just go the full Star Wars treatment... travel takes exactly how long as the plo9t intends it. You need characters to get across the galaxy in the space of one scene... go for it. You want to have it feel like ocean cruises of the 19th century? Have them take weeks to get to their destination.