We all know that Star Wars doesn't follow our own laws of science. It's fantasy and that's one of the things that makes it so much fun. We suspend our disbelief and are drawn into its universe.

With that said, I have a question for my fellow GMs. Has anybody encountered a rule or suggestion that would prohibit me from allowing a ship's computer from picking up a distress signal while in hyperspace? I'm torn on the science of the concept of doing this to my players. On one hand Interdictor ships produce a gravity well that trick a ship's computer that it is about to collide with a mass and "pulls" it out of hyperspace. It is theorized that gravity travels at the speed of light so an Interdictor ship may not actually work as suggested.

However, this is Star Wars. The rules of our universe may not always apply. Back to the distress signal. I think it adds in the possibility to add cool random events. Thoughts? Criticisms?

I dont know if this is possible or not but i think this is a small detail. Chances are high your players dont know either . So if you think you can make something cool out of it go for it ^^. My Players only start worrying about science if something bad happened to them .

Well nothing says you can't use this to explain how the interdictor's work?

It's easier to travel to known systems as they include a navigation beacon network that naturally includes a communication network in case of irregularities after all it's most likely the mega corporations who want their cargos to reach their destination and earn them their profits.

It would also explain how the Empire is able to preempt the Rebels as their control over the Holonet hides this little secret.

So someone sends out a distress signal on this network normally should only be picked up by the mega corps and the Empire it has however intercepted their ship and triggered the safety causing them to return to normal space.

Being unaware what's going on all they know something brought them out of hyperspace and now can pick up the distress signal since they lack the means to realise what happened and link the distress signal to their predicament.

Does that sound OK to you?

Judging by some of the crazy things done in hyperspace in Star Wars Rebels and Episode VII, I think you can have just about anything happen in hyperspace.

In fact, make the the fact that a distress signal breaching hyperspace part of the story. Point out how odd that is. The stranger the more enticing it should be for the PCs.

Hyperspace buoys send out signals into hyperspace for navigators to follow. Same can be said for a distress signal. The range of that signal is probably small, maybe a few dozen light years, so the Players' ship would need to be passing somewhat close to the distress signal. If its along their route to their intended destination, they would definitely see it though. Then they can choose to follow it and exit hyperspace early or ignore it and keep on going to their destination, maybe making a note of it in the nav computer so they can check it out later.

The Holonet isn't the only technology that can send transmissions through hyperspace. I'd say its reasonable to assume at least some ships come equipped with 'hypertransmitter distress beacons'.

Sturn has some good stuff on his page at https://sites.google.com/site/sturnsstuff/starwars/resources

Included on that page is the stuff he’s working on for communications and sensor gear, which is looking very good to me.

So, I’d make it pretty easy for ships to have a small Emergency Hyperspace Transceiver that can get a distress call out to hundreds if not thousands of light years. Not outside the sector mind you, but at least reach a decent part of the sector. And if it was picked up by a Hyperspace Relay Station, then it could potentially reach anywhere in the galaxy, through the relay network.

Now, you might have problems if you were in the Cron Drift, where there might not be anyone within range of your transceiver, except for possibly anyone who was passing through in Hyperspace, or maybe they got knocked off the Perlemian Trade Route, or somesuch….

I do not know if it is timeline dependent, but Force Awakens has two extremely odd things happen that lifted quite a few eyebrows in my group. (None of us watch Rebels).

1. Resistance Base communicates, by voice, to the X-Wings that are in hyperspace. This made us blink.

2. The communication was an order to go ahead and drop out of hyperspace to begin the attack. Um, what?

3. Which means, that not only is it possible in Force Awakens to seemingly just kind of lollygag about in hyperspace until you want to exit, but that you can do it in an X-Wing, which previous versions relied on their preprogrammed astromech data to jump with.

That could be us jumping to conclusions, but that's definitely what it looked like to us.

(Note: I don't like the implications of that one single bit as it goes against every previous notion I had about hyperspace... which was that it's a planned course journey that you're effectively locked into until you drop out of it. There's no "We'll just wait here in hyperspace until we get the attack signal." But that's just me, and now many of us have to change our perception of hyperspace travel.)

I think we have seen previous examples in the EU of other ships holding in hyperspace, just waiting to exit. Probably not starfighters, but still the same concept.

As for instantaneous communications with starfighters in the middle of an attack run, they did that in both ANH and RotJ. The difference there is that those vehicles were in normal space and not hyperspace. But if you can have hyperspace communications at all, it would be a logical extension for me that it wouldn’t matter if one or both parties are in hyperspace or normal space.

@R5D8 - I agree 100%. The only way you can BE in hyperspace is if you are traveling faster than the speed of light. Doing something like 'loitering' in hyperspace doesn't make much sense to me for the story at all. I'll buy that they can probably communicate in hyperspace, but if the X-wings were traveling faster than the speed of light, it's not like they could be 'circling in a pattern' around the system they were about to attack just waiting for the order. If that's what Disney wants us to believe, they really have just broken the theoretical concept of hyperspace for everyone. :/

Not to say the movie wasn't great. I loved it and thought it was awesome. I just wish they'd stay more consistent with the story line for things like that. Everyone's first experience with Star Wars hyperspace travel is the Millennium Falcon traveling from Tatooine to Alderaan. If that's the sci-fi concept of what 'hyperspace' is, they should stick with that concept throughout the story. They shouldn't reinvent the wheel on this one and say that hyperdrives work the same as jump drives with instantaneous travel or that walking through a Stargate portal teleports you somewhere completely different. This is Star Wars, not some other sci-fi franchise. Not that they did that, but still, if they're throwing out all the EU on us the least they could do is stay consistent with the original trilogy.

@brad - What EU reference was that? I've probably read only a fraction, so I'm always interested in finding out what else is worth reading.

Hyperspace Communications

That part about communicating in hyperspace, well, why not? With all the stuff about those transceivers and whatnot... It's Star Wars. In Star Trek we would have had a debate about the technological implications, and what sort of new inventions they should have made to overcome Law X from Einstein, and how to compensate Heisenberg, or even duplicate the Theory of Hawkins, topped by technobabble to give it a shiny top. Don't take this wrong, I like Star Trek as well, but this is Star Wars. It works. Why, because it is cool to do so (or so thought the writers anyways).

Hyperspace loitering

Hanging about in hyperspace. When I first saw the Force Awakens I thought this was a bit strange too. My own thoughts about hyperspace were the same as were expressed here. You fly faster than lightspeed, gravity can pull you out of it (safety measures do so to prevent collision), and it is a pre-plotted course. We're not talking about the length of the trip, though. That has always been the "Speed of plot". But hanging out there, in hyperspace, until such time when you decide to pull out. I have two theories about that.

1. The simplest is, that TFA is set decades after ROTJ. The Star Wars universe has always had a baseline of technological development, and rarely do they invent something new. A blaster rifle is still a blaster rifle, even if the outer appearance varies somewhat between the Old Republic and the ROTJ STormtrooper rifle. A lightsaber is a lightsaber (with variations), a vibro-ax is a vibro-ax, a droid a droid, etc. But sometimes they do have a small advance. Couldn't we just accept that this is one of those small improvements they made? Hyperspace is an alternate dimension invented by Lucas to enable his ships to travel the galaxy, and 'natural laws' do not always aply there. What if they enhanced the hyperdrives so people can put the hyperdrive on some sort of break, just at the end of the trip, but before "teleporting the ship from that other dimension into realspace" so to say. You would not be traveling, but you'd still be inside hyperspace.

2. Another, somewhat odd thought would be, for the X-Wing squadron to have a preprogrammed course, which also invilves circling the destination, in hyperspace, for a couple of millions times. A sort of navigational loop. If safety measures can drop your ship out of hyperspace, it is conceivable the pilot could choose to pull that lever as well. The attack was a timed one, the clock was ticking. So the squadron wouldn't have to wait there, inside hyperspace, indefinately. Just long enough to get the greenlight to interfere with the navigational loop, and fall out of hyperspace.

Hyperspace distress signals

As for the Original Post... Star Wars, to me, has always been about the 'Rule of Cool'. There are some assumptions on natural laws. It takes time to build a Star Destroyer. When you jump out of an airspeeder over a planet with noticable gravity you fall down, and the landing might be rough. But minor things should always simply be handwaved for the Rule of Cool. If it is cool for the party to be in hyperspace and then receive a distress signal, then it is cool, and it will happen. A couple posters here have already given explanations on how it could be done within the limits of Star Wars tech. Just go for it, maybe even point out it would be an odd occurrence, as kaosoe already mentioned. Just tell that cool story.

I wonder if the 'grand official' novelization of the movie will provide any insight.

Hyperspace has always been hand waved in the shows. Clone Wars has ships flying from sector to sector in minutes sometimes. Speed of Plot for certain.

I could accept that the routes that the X-Wings in Force Awakens took could perhaps just be to circle the planet indefinitely, and just required the pilot to deactivate the hyperspace engine. Though there's no way for them to all come out close to each other unless they were all linked to the lead X-Wing's 'killswitch'. Also, this is a planet that is the Grand Base of the First Order. Even 30 years ago the base on Endor could see the approaching ships in hyperspace ("Han, hurry.", looking at the display. "The fleet is almost here.") And MAYBE it doesn't work on something so small as an X-Wing, but I would think the two very large and very real risks are being detected while in a holding pattern around/near the planet, and also of actually hitting one of what must have been a multitude of other ships in the system... let alone each other.

Unfortunately, it's just one of the myriad of problems with this movie (see the multitude of other posts). To be honest, in my own games, I'm pretty much going to simply ignore the ramifications of said scene for now and not worry about it.

Fortunately, I love the characters. They are well done.

P.S. That one scene is a lot more watchable if you just know that Han is engaging the regular engines and not dropping the Falcon out of hyperspace by hand.

Hyperspace Communications

That part about communicating in hyperspace, well, why not? With all the stuff about those transceivers and whatnot... It's Star Wars. In Star Trek we would have had a debate about the technological implications, and what sort of new inventions they should have made to overcome Law X from Einstein, and how to compensate Heisenberg, or even duplicate the Theory of Hawkins, topped by technobabble to give it a shiny top. Don't take this wrong, I like Star Trek as well, but this is Star Wars. It works. Why, because it is cool to do so (or so thought the writers anyways).

Hyperspace loitering

Hanging about in hyperspace. When I first saw the Force Awakens I thought this was a bit strange too. My own thoughts about hyperspace were the same as were expressed here. You fly faster than lightspeed, gravity can pull you out of it (safety measures do so to prevent collision), and it is a pre-plotted course. We're not talking about the length of the trip, though. That has always been the "Speed of plot". But hanging out there, in hyperspace, until such time when you decide to pull out. I have two theories about that.

1. The simplest is, that TFA is set decades after ROTJ. The Star Wars universe has always had a baseline of technological development, and rarely do they invent something new. A blaster rifle is still a blaster rifle, even if the outer appearance varies somewhat between the Old Republic and the ROTJ STormtrooper rifle. A lightsaber is a lightsaber (with variations), a vibro-ax is a vibro-ax, a droid a droid, etc. But sometimes they do have a small advance. Couldn't we just accept that this is one of those small improvements they made? Hyperspace is an alternate dimension invented by Lucas to enable his ships to travel the galaxy, and 'natural laws' do not always aply there. What if they enhanced the hyperdrives so people can put the hyperdrive on some sort of break, just at the end of the trip, but before "teleporting the ship from that other dimension into realspace" so to say. You would not be traveling, but you'd still be inside hyperspace.

2. Another, somewhat odd thought would be, for the X-Wing squadron to have a preprogrammed course, which also invilves circling the destination, in hyperspace, for a couple of millions times. A sort of navigational loop. If safety measures can drop your ship out of hyperspace, it is conceivable the pilot could choose to pull that lever as well. The attack was a timed one, the clock was ticking. So the squadron wouldn't have to wait there, inside hyperspace, indefinately. Just long enough to get the greenlight to interfere with the navigational loop, and fall out of hyperspace.

Hyperspace distress signals

As for the Original Post... Star Wars, to me, has always been about the 'Rule of Cool'. There are some assumptions on natural laws. It takes time to build a Star Destroyer. When you jump out of an airspeeder over a planet with noticable gravity you fall down, and the landing might be rough. But minor things should always simply be handwaved for the Rule of Cool. If it is cool for the party to be in hyperspace and then receive a distress signal, then it is cool, and it will happen. A couple posters here have already given explanations on how it could be done within the limits of Star Wars tech. Just go for it, maybe even point out it would be an odd occurrence, as kaosoe already mentioned. Just tell that cool story.

If they were spinning around the system at FTL speed, I think they'd tear themselves apart. A much easier way of running that scene would have been to have the X-wing squadrons waiting just outside the system (a fraction of a light year away, well outside any sensor range) and have them do a micro-hyperspace jump into the system to start the attack.

The micro-hyperspace jump method was used extensively in EU material, would have been a lot more consistent with the Star Wars concept of space travel, and just would have made more sense.

A much easier way of running that scene would have been to have the X-wing squadrons waiting just outside the system (a fraction of a light year away, well outside any sensor range) and have them do a micro-hyperspace jump into the system to start the attack.

The micro-hyperspace jump method was used extensively in EU material, would have been a lot more consistent with the Star Wars concept of space travel, and just would have made more sense.

I don't think anyone would disagree with you on that, and that is what chafes me about a LOT of Force Awakens. Many scenes could have been Much better if they had perhaps read, or remembered reading, some of the books. Or, even watched Return of the Jedi. Just have the ships "Massing at Sullust" until the attack order is given makes so much more sense that it boggles my mind they didn't do it that way, and if I ever found out it was a consideration and they had the ships just hanging out in hyperspace because it would be 'cooler', I'm going to be sick to my writer's stomach.

On the flip side to that, as a GM, I have a love/loathe relationship with the microjump.

This gave me an idea of my own. "The Haunted hyperlane". A distress signal that got lodged in a specific hyperlane via holonet waves or whatever.

Hyperspace travel is more than lightspeed, hyperspace is a dimension in its own. Even the experts in the file doesn't fully understand it. Isn't this how both the WEG and FFG games explain it?

In FFG hyperspace traveltime is tied to distance, if you don't have special coordinates or smuggler routes. In WEG I remember reading that the distance didn't mattered little, it was more about how complicated, dangerous or effective the route and plotted coordinates and codes were, since the light speed you were allow ed to travel in the hyperspace dimension made the actual travel almost instantanous no matter how far you travelt in the Galaxy. It was all the hyperspace shadows from real space your navcomputer and ship had to dodge and navigate and how efficient the codes were.

But yea, I feel hyperspace travel is very handwavable too. FFG even says that travel time in the most popular routes varie because of traffic. .

"loitering in hyperspace" is writers liberty. Without thinking of the consequences or problems. Because why didn't they do that in RotJ? They new the fleet was approaching.. you could see it on the screen in the bunker. That is what made the plan so risky, the Fleet had to jump blind and hope the shield was down when they go there.

Instead they could have said "We are detecting jamming, that means we lost the element of surprise. Send in some A-wings to scout it out to let us know when the shields are down"

COmmunication in hyperspace is also the same. It allows compression of a story to have a dialouge while in hyperspace instead of having a conversation before jumping, and allows for In medias res.

Microjumps shouldn't be common, it should put stress on the hyperspace engines, and require some very good astrogation ability, and sensors or navigation information. This is my "Yes, but..." category.

But as far as the OP. You are assuming someone would want to drop out of hyperspace to investigate the signal. I have used it before in a game where some pirates towed a rogue asteroid out into a hyperlane in the hopes forcing something to drop out of hyperspace and hijack it. This could be used to better effect depending on the story

Nah, they just didn't have enough ranks in astrogatin and the right codes ...

We all know that Star Wars doesn't follow our own laws of science. It's fantasy and that's one of the things that makes it so much fun. We suspend our disbelief and are drawn into its universe.

With that said, I have a question for my fellow GMs. Has anybody encountered a rule or suggestion that would prohibit me from allowing a ship's computer from picking up a distress signal while in hyperspace? I'm torn on the science of the concept of doing this to my players. On one hand Interdictor ships produce a gravity well that trick a ship's computer that it is about to collide with a mass and "pulls" it out of hyperspace. It is theorized that gravity travels at the speed of light so an Interdictor ship may not actually work as suggested.

However, this is Star Wars. The rules of our universe may not always apply. Back to the distress signal. I think it adds in the possibility to add cool random events. Thoughts? Criticisms?

It is suggested that hyperspace lanes are not uninterrupted anyway. So jumping out of hyperspace, flying around or trough some obstacles and jumping back into hyperspace are common to happen when traveling on a hyperspace lane and those points of interest are common points for pirates to attack, accidents to happen, distress calls to receive. Besides that, if your ship has FTL-Coms than your ships seems to be able to receive messages, though holonet access seems rare these days. More civilized times we had when the republic still existed.

My thinking is - what is the point of a distress beacon? To inform someone "Holy crap! We're in trouble! Please come help us!". Considering that some of the places a ship can get stuck are pretty remote, that nobody ever comes to visit, a beacon that can't send to a ship in Hyperspace would be pretty pointless.

So yeah, it might be because the Phase Tachyon Com-inverter can tap into the local Hyperspace node, it might be because a Wizard did it, whatever - but distress beacons can tag passing ships* in hyperspace.

*All the way up to the point where the plot needs them to be stuck wherever they've broken down at. Then the Beacon is useless.

Other sci fi universes have ships automatically drop out of Hyperspace/FTL/Warp if they detect an emergency signal. I can imagine that several ships in the star wars universe are programmed like that, think salvagers, bounty hunters, pirates, etc.

We all know that Star Wars doesn't follow our own laws of science. It's fantasy and that's one of the things that makes it so much fun. We suspend our disbelief and are drawn into its universe.

With that said, I have a question for my fellow GMs. Has anybody encountered a rule or suggestion that would prohibit me from allowing a ship's computer from picking up a distress signal while in hyperspace? I'm torn on the science of the concept of doing this to my players. On one hand Interdictor ships produce a gravity well that trick a ship's computer that it is about to collide with a mass and "pulls" it out of hyperspace. It is theorized that gravity travels at the speed of light so an Interdictor ship may not actually work as suggested.

However, this is Star Wars. The rules of our universe may not always apply. Back to the distress signal. I think it adds in the possibility to add cool random events. Thoughts? Criticisms?

I can not remember any sci fi game or movie where it would not be possible. In game, starship sensors are not very long range. That said, a beacon would be sending out the signal to and into the ships sensor range. I would say use it!

I do not know if it is timeline dependent, but Force Awakens has two extremely odd things happen that lifted quite a few eyebrows in my group. (None of us watch Rebels).

1. Resistance Base communicates, by voice, to the X-Wings that are in hyperspace. This made us blink.

2. The communication was an order to go ahead and drop out of hyperspace to begin the attack. Um, what?

3. Which means, that not only is it possible in Force Awakens to seemingly just kind of lollygag about in hyperspace until you want to exit, but that you can do it in an X-Wing, which previous versions relied on their preprogrammed astromech data to jump with.

That could be us jumping to conclusions, but that's definitely what it looked like to us.

(Note: I don't like the implications of that one single bit as it goes against every previous notion I had about hyperspace... which was that it's a planned course journey that you're effectively locked into until you drop out of it. There's no "We'll just wait here in hyperspace until we get the attack signal." But that's just me, and now many of us have to change our perception of hyperspace travel.)

Rebels has an instance of changing course while in hyperspace and Hera first needs to tell Jarrus a thing or two about how dangerous this is while than doing it anyway. Which makes sense considering that hyperspace travel is using hyperspace lanes, basically highways. Strips of cleared and explored space which is absolute and surely free of mass shadows until a freaking space whale crosses that lane or some retarded Pirate is dragging a bunch of asteroids all over the lane to get some juicy prey to emergency exit cause of the mass shadows.

For loitering in hyperspace … your secondary hyperspace engine is usually about 24 times slower than your primary … just slow down or accelerate to maximum hyperspace speed and you should be able to loiter just fine in hyperspace. You can not do it indefinitely, but you certainly can do it.

Hyperspace communication seem to be in limited use and range, usually relying on the holonet relay network. Though distress signals could for sure be a hyperspace signal as well, especially as those signals do not need to be REAL TIME like holonet just somewhat FTL. You might not play quake with the cheap ftl communication because the latency is two **** high, but you can for sure call for help passing ships on your hyperplane … for all practical purpose those lanes do not seem so wide that you would really need FTL com anyway, after all just dragging debris into such a lane is enough to to drag ships out of hyperspace and interdictor cruiser with its at best a thousand kilometer wide gravity well can blockage a whole lane and thus a whole system.

Speaking of coms, a complete pirate holonet array is just 2 hardpoints, ®25,000c, so I would guess that really the minimum should be some hyperspace emergency beacon.