Weren't Black Squadron lingering in hyperspace waiting for the shield to come down on Starkiller Base? Weren't they signaled from the base on D'Qar?

They don't have to stay in the hyperspace, just parked outside the Starkiller's sensor range and then perform a short jump once they got the signal.

On ‎4‎/‎21‎/‎2017 at 2:37 PM, Alexhurlbut said:

They don't have to stay in the hyperspace, just parked outside the Starkiller's sensor range and then perform a short jump once they got the signal.

While that would work, I recall visuals that indicated the squadron was in fact in hyperspace waiting to arrive.

I've got a list of "hyperspace tricks" in a supplement I'll be posting soon as part of my Vehicle Ops series that tries to explain the various things we've seen in the movies (delayed arrival, jumping from inside a starship, jumping to within orbit, micro jumps, group jumps).

It's posted in this thread now.

Well now I have to go over the movie.

52 minutes ago, Alexhurlbut said:

Well now I have to go over the movie.

yup they are in hyper space when they get the signal.

On 22/04/2017 at 8:00 AM, Sturn said:

While that would work, I recall visuals that indicated the squadron was in fact in hyperspace waiting to arrive.

[snip]

Yup, absolutely. What's more interesting - and I only just noticed when I grabbed the screencap - is that you can also see the other Black Squadron ships in hyperspace around Poe. This certainly suggests to me that there is a way of slaving navicomputers to a single one to execute a jump, ensuring all ships so linked will emerge at the same time and place.

There must also be a way of plotting a hyperspace "holding pattern", as this is what Black Squadron were doing; just sort of hanging in hyperspace until they got the go-ahead from the Resistance Base to drop out and attack Starkiller Base.

Eh, maybe it's something that was invented in the years after RotJ...

(I prefer that over "retcon" or "We don't give an F about consistency, we're going to slap whatever looks kewlest most awesome on the screen!")

E: coordinating jumps was a thing before, but jumps were always "you take this long to go this far and reach this spot in realspace", wasn't ever just "hovering" in hyperspace. It's not like a submarine diving into a different dimension and then waiting there.

My hyperspace tricks mentioned above (will post a thread soon to the entire document) covers game mechanics for both group jumps and a circle jump that covers what we see on screen. Sorry for the bad formatting from copying and pasting:

Edit: Entire document is linked in this thread now.

Quote

Circle Jump: The Circle Jump technique may not be yet discovered and thus not allowed by a referee unless his players think it up themselves. This special jump allows a starcraft to delay its arrival at its target, but with limitations. The technique involves plotting a hyperspace jump as normal, but adds a massive amount of circular patterns around the destination at the end of the jump. The starship will arrive after the normally computed trip time, but remain in a holding pattern as it constantly circles the destination while still in hyperspace. This pattern can thus be held for several minutes, perhaps up to an hour. Then, when the starship wishes to arrive, it simply disengages its hyperspace drive.

Circle Jumps have a base difficulty and plot time as normal, based upon the length of the route. However, 2 rounds are added to the base plot time. The smaller the size of the circular holding pattern makes arrival closer and more precise. However, smaller holding patterns are more difficult. A System sized pattern (circling a star system) does not change the difficulty of the check. A pattern circling a planet or other destination at safe jump (Long Planetary – space range, Close Stellar range) upgrades the check once. Note that a Circle Jump could be combined with a Microjump (see above) to arrive very closely to the target at a specified time. This would require the Microjump’s base difficulty and plotting time, upgraded once.

When the pilot decides to disengage from the holding pattern, a simple Maneuver is required to disengage the ship’s hyperdrive and arrive at the destination.

Group Jump: A very common jump technique, not really a trick, is the Group Jump. In order for a group of starcraft to arrive at the same time at a destination a Group Jump may be attempted with one starship making the Astrogation check for the entire group. Hyperspace travel time is by the slowest rating of the ships in the group. One <setback> is added due to the added complexity. Another <setback> is added per 10 starcraft in the group. The default Group Jump implies all of the ships are in close proximity (Close Planetary-space range or nearer) with parallel flight paths.

Success with <threat> results in a successful jump, but starships may not all arrive at the same location or at varying times. The more <threat> the greater the variations in time and place. <despair> with success may be used to cause arriving starships to accidentally ram each other.

For our game, we assume hyperspace communication equipment is expensive and restricted. In general, only well-funded organizations with logistical wherewithal will have access to it. The imperial bureaucracy, some planetary governments, major corporations, the rebel alliance, etc. And, even then, the Empire controls the Holonet and most hyperspace communications nodes that corps and planets rely on to communicate across hyperspace. Setting up private nodes or networks would be a quite a feat.

Also, the amount of said equipment depends on how developed the world you are on is. On Coruscant there are probably private communications companies you can pay not insubstantial fees to send messages over the holonet (insofar as there is a receiving station on the other end). But out on the Rim? Good luck! This is not to say hyperspace transceivers don't exist or that players can't lay their hands on them, (our group has one on their ship). However, we generally assume its not the galactic norm . Most have to rely on the Holonet.

Another limitation we imposed for our games is that near-instantaneous communication and alerts may be straightforward, but real-time updates of the entire Holonet? We treat that like major database replication-update on the Internet. That's a lot of data! It happens at scheduled intervals. And what is more, highly sensitive data may not be included in that update. Heavily need-to-know or classified information may require a courier and ship for secure transmission. As a result, the Imperials you are dealing with today don't always have the most up to date information.

In fact, on a few of our character's operations, knowing the Holonet update schedule for a certain system was critical to the PCs slipping through the Empire's grasp.