I know how far comlinks and comms reach, all within the same star system or less. But can someone communicate from one star system to another, from one side of the Galaxy to the other?

Don`t they do that in the movies and tv-shows? Or am I remembering it wrong?

They used the HoloNet for cross-galaxy communications. It is based on hyperwave communications, and is virtually instantaneous at any known range.

The book “Far Horizons” has a "Chedak Communications X-500 Portable Holonet Relay” for 75,000 credits that is “portable” in the sense that it can be moved from one location to another, as opposed to being fixed in a building or a ship.

The book “Desperate Allies” has a shipboard attachment called a “Advanced Subspace Encryption Array” for 6000 credits, 1 hard point, and Rarity 7, that can be used to communicate via subspace to nearby starsystems, and you could use them to build something kind of like your own private holonet, if you set up repeater stations all over the areas you want covered.

The book “Desperate Allies” also has a shipboard attachment called a “HoloNet Pirate Array” for 25,000 credits, 2 hard points, and Rarity 8, that could be used as a real-deal holonet relay station, but must be mounted in a ship and is considerably less “portable” than the model from “Far Horizons”.

So, yeah. There are options in that space. They’re expensive. If you’re not a government or a well-funded private operation, you’re unlikely to be able to afford that kind of thing.

And even if you can get onto the Holonet, then there’s the issue that the whole **** thing is officially owned and very tightly controlled by the Empire. You better be the best communications hacker in the galaxy if you want to use the Holonet for your own purposes — without getting caught.

They used the HoloNet for cross-galaxy communications. It is based on hyperwave communications, and is virtually instantaneous at any known range.

The book “Far Horizons” has a "Chedak Communications X-500 Portable Holonet Relay” for 75,000 credits that is “portable” in the sense that it can be moved from one location to another, as opposed to being fixed in a building or a ship.

The book “Desperate Allies” has a shipboard attachment called a “Advanced Subspace Encryption Array” for 6000 credits, 1 hard point, and Rarity 7, that can be used to communicate via subspace to nearby starsystems, and you could use them to build something kind of like your own private holonet, if you set up repeater stations all over the areas you want covered.

The book “Desperate Allies” also has a shipboard attachment called a “HoloNet Pirate Array” for 25,000 credits, 2 hard points, and Rarity 8, that could be used as a real-deal holonet relay station, but must be mounted in a ship and is considerably less “portable” than the model from “Far Horizons”.

So, yeah. There are options in that space. They’re expensive. If you’re not a government or a well-funded private operation, you’re unlikely to be able to afford that kind of thing.

And even if you can get onto the Holonet, then there’s the issue that the whole **** thing is officially owned and very tightly controlled by the Empire. You better be the best communications hacker in the galaxy if you want to use the Holonet for your own purposes — without getting caught.

Thank you, that is very helpful! I guess you can`t do much with datapads and comlinks and comms then, other than within the star system.

Thank you, that is very helpful! I guess you can`t do much with datapads and comlinks and comms then, other than within the star system.

In-system communications is generally not subspace or hyperspace, and therefore is limited to the speed of radio waves and light.

Since it takes fifteen minutes for light to get from the Sun to Mars, if you were doing a near orbit on the Sun, it would take thirty minutes for you to send communications via normal space to Mars and then get a response back.

Of course, if plot demands something different, then feel free to go ahead and do whatever plot demands. Maybe you’ve got highly portable short-range subspace communications that can give you virtually instantaneous communications within the same star system, but it doesn’t have the power to reach from one star system to another.

Thank you, that is very helpful! I guess you can`t do much with datapads and comlinks and comms then, other than within the star system.

In-system communications is generally not subspace or hyperspace, and therefore is limited to the speed of radio waves and light.

Since it takes fifteen minutes for light to get from the Sun to Mars, if you were doing a near orbit on the Sun, it would take thirty minutes for you to send communications via normal space to Mars and then get a response back.

Of course, if plot demands something different, then feel free to go ahead and do whatever plot demands. Maybe you’ve got highly portable short-range subspace communications that can give you virtually instantaneous communications within the same star system, but it doesn’t have the power to reach from one star system to another.

Or do like most writers and just don't have the players sit there at the table. Give the statement of the delay, then go through the conversation as if they were face to face. You see this in many scifi novels and movies where someone mentions the time lag, then cut around it to keep the audience engaged.

Thank you, that is very helpful! I guess you can`t do much with datapads and comlinks and comms then, other than within the star system.

In-system communications is generally not subspace or hyperspace, and therefore is limited to the speed of radio waves and light.

Since it takes fifteen minutes for light to get from the Sun to Mars, if you were doing a near orbit on the Sun, it would take thirty minutes for you to send communications via normal space to Mars and then get a response back.

Of course, if plot demands something different, then feel free to go ahead and do whatever plot demands. Maybe you’ve got highly portable short-range subspace communications that can give you virtually instantaneous communications within the same star system, but it doesn’t have the power to reach from one star system to another.

Since this is Space Opera and Science Fantasy I would say communication is instantaneous within the same star system. The sublight travel tables on page 246 of the EotE CRB says it takes 30 to 90 minutes to fly from a planet to one of its moons and from 12 to 72 hours to travel from the center of a system to its furthest limits, so I guess insta communication isn`t far fetched in this kind of setting.

Do the FFG books(not wookieepedia) have more on the games take on the holonet?

Or do like most writers and just don't have the players sit there at the table. Give the statement of the delay, then go through the conversation as if they were face to face. You see this in many scifi novels and movies where someone mentions the time lag, then cut around it to keep the audience engaged.

That works, too.

Frankly, I think most of the time everyone basically just ignores the lag or isn’t even aware that there is supposed to be a lag.

So, I would say that you should do whatever works for you and your table and your story/plot.

Do the FFG books(not wookieepedia) have more on the games take on the holonet?

I’m not aware of much in the way of information from FFG on the subject, but I could be wrong.

Even if the holonet is highly secured and acces restricted by the empire, Hyperwaves protocoles are a well known technology.

So, you can easily imagine that in a star system, intra planetary communications uses radio/fiber/whatever mundane techno (like our internet).

Then, this grid is connected to a few gateway using a hyperwaves tech to link it to the another planet's grids.

The prices described make it affordable for a medium business.

So you can have you main office on "earth" and your factories on "mars" communicating with each other in real time over your own hyperwave private network.

Or you can use the already existing hyperwave network, the holonet, but to do so you expose yourself and your communication to the empire.

You can easily transpose the "Real Life" network architectures to the star wars system, and probably a good part of the "hacking concepts" to play our slicing sessions.

You can easily transpose the "Real Life" network architectures to the star wars system, and probably a good part of the "hacking concepts" to play our slicing sessions.

I would urge caution in this area. The Star Wars technology was dreamt of and designed in the late 70s and early 80s, and there’s a lot of more modern technologies and techniques that don’t translate so well in that environment.

If you go that route, you’ll tend to get a lot of people who want to treat everything like the modern world, and then you’ll run into all sorts of modern world problems — which you don’t want, trust me.

If you want to run a gritty noir Shadowrun/CyberPunk2020 game, then you should feel free to do so.

Just be aware that’s not Star Wars, and trying to run that flavor of campaign in this system is not likely to turn out well for the players or the GM.

At least, not unless you make a lot of other changes to suit, at which point what you’re basically doing is running a gritty noir Shadowrun/Cyberpunk2020 style game using the Narrative Dice System, and there’s virtually no “Star Wars” left.

The Cirenian Communications Pioneer Long-Range Transceiver (p100 Suns of Fortune) can transmit up to 100 light years...

The Cirenian Communications Pioneer Long-Range Transceiver (p100 Suns of Fortune) can transmit up to 100 light years...

Is that subspace, hyperspace, or normal space?

Because if it’s normal space, you’re going to be waiting a while to get a response.

The Cirenian Communications Pioneer Long-Range Transceiver (p100 Suns of Fortune) can transmit up to 100 light years...

Is that subspace, hyperspace, or normal space?

Because if it’s normal space, you’re going to be waiting a while to get a response.

"Also known as subspace transceivers, hypertransceivers are used for nearly instantaneous, faster-than-light communications between star systems." First sentence of the description in the above cited book...

To give you some idea of how far that is (100ly), here's the distance from our solar system to the nearest 25 stars: http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~dolan/constellations/extra/nearest.html

"Also known as subspace transceivers, hypertransceivers are used for nearly instantaneous, faster-than-light communications between star systems." First sentence of the description in the above cited book...

Then that device is sadly slightly mis-named. Because there are other devices which specifically specify in their name as to what type of underlying technology they use, and they jump out at you when you’re looking at a long list of communications devices.

I certainly completely missed it. I was thinking “long range” must mean on the scale from the Sun to the outer planets in our system, which is pretty long range for conventional radio systems.

At the end of the day, the underlying technology is the important point. And how expensive it is, and how hard it is to move from one point to another, and how tightly controlled that is by the Empire, etc….

I've seen references to 25 LY in various WEG and non-game materials for the standard shipboard hyperwave radio.

Sensor range also sets standard comms range, and standard comms (default for ships) are same range as the sensors subspace radios. No lag, but not great range.. (EotE 227, AoR 239, F&D 233)

Transponders broadcast only to close range (ibid.)

Upgraded comms (in AoR and F&D corebooks) allow adding up to 3 range bands; the longest already have extreme range, so that would be potentially 3 on a scale larger than space scale.

So...

Ranges have 3 explicit range sets...

Personal En-Sh-Md-Lo-Ex

Planetary Cl-Sh-Md-Lo-Ex

Space Cl-Sh-Md-Lo-Ex

It's explicit that Ex on Personal is Cl on Planetary; while space ranges medium is long range in planetary surface.

Since we know from Ep V: ESB that Subspace Radio is interfered with by asteroids, we can presume subspace radios would likewise be affected by mountains, etc...

So, comms should probably use planetary ranges. A standard commlink looks to be planetary medium, and "long range" would be just that, planetary long range.

A presumed "Deep Space Range" scale...

Data points include

Close - presumably in system, maybe up to 2.5 LY (0.75 Pc)

Short - probably 10 LY

Medium - 25 LY

Long - 100 LY

Extreme - probably 250 LY...

I would urge caution in this area. The Star Wars technology was dreamt of and designed in the late 70s and early 80s, and there’s a lot of more modern technologies and techniques that don’t translate so well in that environment.

If you go that route, you’ll tend to get a lot of people who want to treat everything like the modern world, and then you’ll run into all sorts of modern world problems — which you don’t want, trust me.

If you want to run a gritty noir Shadowrun/CyberPunk2020 game, then you should feel free to do so.

Just be aware that’s not Star Wars, and trying to run that flavor of campaign in this system is not likely to turn out well for the players or the GM.

At least, not unless you make a lot of other changes to suit, at which point what you’re basically doing is running a gritty noir Shadowrun/Cyberpunk2020 style game using the Narrative Dice System, and there’s virtually no “Star Wars” left.

I do not say you should copy pasta the matrice/decking from shadowrun/cyberpunk, i'm talking about "Real life" hacking concepts, as in " today's real life" and not about slicing ICE and security Persona.

In JoY the do present a few slicing action, like the Spike, which is nothing but a DDoS.

The Encryption sampling is more about social engineering and physical effraction in the book, and it make sens, that create some action for the non - computer skilled characters.

Spoofing can be nicely incorporated too.

The Shield hacking feels a lot like a mix between a DDoS and some kind of honey pot on the opposite sensor system to make it missuse the shields.

For now, there is almost neither no rules nor fluff about what is "slicing". No rules is not an issue, as we're not trying to mimic SR3, but at least a few ideas of the kind of action you can try do can be realy helpfull. At least i think so.

Then again, i'm not speaking of the "Real Life/ present days" technologies, or IT vulnerabilities, as the tech involved in SW is not the same.

But the "hacking concepts", things like Men in the middle, spoofing, slow analize of a data flow to finaly crack the encryption, DDoS, Trojan and viruses loaded sneakily on an official's datapad, that kind of things, can be good exemple, and can be easily emulated by one computer skill roll.

I do not say you should copy pasta the matrice/decking from shadowrun/cyberpunk, i'm talking about "Real life" hacking concepts, as in " today's real life" and not about slicing ICE and security Persona.

I’ve been a professional Unix/Internet system administrator for almost 30 years, and in that time I’ve done more than my share of computer security work — including working at the Pentagon on classified systems.

Trust me when I tell you that you do NOT want to introduce modern computer hacking into the Star Wars galaxy. You would fare about as well as a WW-II era fighter against modern F-16s, F-18s, F-22s, etc….

@bradknowles I'm myself too used to be working in IT security and i definitly agree with the fact you should not introduce modern computer hacking in the SW movie's univers.

I've been highly surprised to discover the "slicer" spec in the FFG system.

But the fact is, and i think i may not be the only one, i don't especialy like the SW movie's unvivers, i'm way more about what it makes you imagine behind the curtain. I've never liked the empire vs rebels plot, but i did fancy a lot beeing a space pirate, or a bounty hunter working for the hutt and such.

So "my star wars" may be more Noir as you said. It is probably not the same as yours but hey ! that's RPG So it CAN be !

My game is probably less Epic, or on a smaller scale, but that's is the way my friends and i like it And in a game where most of the time you bite more than you can chew, knowing what you can and can not do quite often tells if you live or die.

Anyway, i'm now way off the original topic So i should end here.

I've been highly surprised to discover the "slicer" spec in the FFG system.

It’s pretty limited, and I think the folks at FFG have done a reasonably good job at keeping things reasonably well balanced overall.

I just wanted to warn folks that this is a slope that can get very slippery, very quickly.

But, as you say — your game, your rules.

Thanks!

Don`t they do that in the movies and tv-shows? Or am I remembering it wrong?

Obi-Wan communicates in real-time with the Jedi Temple while on Kamino. Now, Kamino is a system so remote that it isn't even on any of their nav charts which means he couldn't have been communicating through a local holonet substation.

Therefore, at a minimum, the transmitters on a small starfighter are powerful enough to communicate out-of-system, and should probably be able to transmit hundreds of light years away without relays.

Don`t they do that in the movies and tv-shows? Or am I remembering it wrong?

Obi-Wan communicates in real-time with the Jedi Temple while on Kamino. Now, Kamino is a system so remote that it isn't even on any of their nav charts which means he couldn't have been communicating through a local holonet substation.

Therefore, at a minimum, the transmitters on a small starfighter are powerful enough to communicate out-of-system, and should probably be able to transmit hundreds of light years away without relays.

You are the first to say that... As this is Space Opera and Sience Fantasy, real life physics and the laws of reality has no place here, so it`s all good.

What I care about is what the rpg books and the movies say about regular comlinks and comms, versus hyperwaves and the holonet communication methods.

This thread have led me to believe that most regular starships and personal gear can`t communicate out of the star system you are in.

Bringing delay and lag into it has no place in Space Opera and Fantasy if not for plot and/or atmosphere..

Maybe Obi-Wan used the Force and Republic Jedi-tech

All forms of communication in the movies and animated series have range and speed defined in "plot convenience units".

I'd recommend that any GM figure out what works for them, and then be consistent within their game, and live within those limits.

I worked on this a while back regarding communications:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxzdHVybnNzdHVmZnxneDozZDE0MGE1ZTQ2MWEzN2E

Also, for a ship operations document I'm working on, I came up with a new range scale similar to what Aramis did. The idea is to use the ranges in RAW for comms (based on sensor range), but use a new System scale. The example of various coms compared to the ranges actually is pretty close (iirc) to the ranges described to various coms devices in FFG supplements.

SYSTEM SCALE

Close: to orbit, across a planet. Comlinks. Common on Starfighters.

Short: to another planet in the same system. Long-Ranged Comlinks. Common on Starfighters and Transports.

Medium: to a nearby system. 10's of light years. Short-Ranged Transceivers. Common on Transports.

Long: across a subsector, 100's of light years. Long-Ranged Transceivers. Common on Capital ships.

Extreme: across a secotr, 1000's of light years. Extreme-Ranged Transceivers. Rarely found on Capital & Scout ships.

Most communication systems can reach out as far as 1 plot.

There's kinda two discussions to be had on this topic. What we see in the movies/cartoons and what we have available in the FFG books. I think we would all prefer the rules to duplicate what we see in the movies. Problem is, the FFG rules on comms contradict themselves also.

According to core books, comms on vehicles have a Planetary scale range equal to Sensor range. So, a transport with Medium sensors has a range of "a few hundred kilometers". That's comparable to a basic handheld comlink (see below) also described in the core books. Even an Imperial Star Destroyer's comms are limited to Long Planetary range - several thousand kilometers. There are backpack-sized items available available for 1,000 credits that have a vastly longer range then the best comms on a Star Destroyer??

RAW Comms:

Small Comlink. Core . Up to low orbit range.

Military-grade Comlink. Dangerous Covenants. Planet-wide and planet-orbit range.

Long-Ranged Comlink. Core (in description of Comlink) . Range of "well out into a star system".

Long-Range Transceiver. Suns of Fortune. 100 light year range. Backpack-size, 1,000 credits. Description implies most starships have transcievers.

Short-Ranged Transceiver. Suns of Fortune (in description of L-R Transceiver). 25 light year range.

Portable Holonet Relay. Far Horizons. Allows access to holonet. 15 encumbrance (same as an E-web), but 75,000 credits.

So yep, I say toss the idea of Comm range being equal to Sensor range. Either ignore that statement completely or make up a new scale for vehicle comms that is similar to what we see in the movies and gear lists.