I bet the dial is one straight red and that's it.

And then people gripe about OP primary weapon turret

... born when Containerization was the norm, and has grown up well into the age of the Cargo Container ship. When the Ghost was being built and designed, the folks at Lucasfilm had a very different understanding of how the world would and should work. And so the Ghost has an external cargo area that we can see in many episodes. And when we look at cargo in the Rebels show, we can see that the vast majority of it is containerized- and that cargo ships build for the show are very clearly designed for containers first, people second- much the same way that modern cargo ships are built.

...and Han's ship in the TFA:

Wow! How have I never seen this theory for the Millennium Falcon before?! I really like it.

I thought the Falcon's cockpit was modded, and on the stock 1300 it was in-between the mandibles?

That's the YT-2000 I think.

Yup

And YT-1000

And YT-1760

And YT-1930

So what happens when they reach their destination? Another YT-1300 shows up, bites onto the other end and pushes back until they've stopped?

lucas has SUPER DENSE VACUUM

where a ship stops dead when engine dies

You know where all that missing "Dark Matter" went that has physicists so confused? It all got collected a long time ago into the vacuum energy of a galaxy far, far away.

Explains why there appears to be no cargo hold space in the Falcon.

TL;DR: Lived experience influences art in weird ways.

I feel super bad about getting nerdy about this this, but!

So containerization of international shipping got started in the 1950s, but didn't really take off until the 1970s. Before containerization, most ships were "break bulk"- basically they'd just pile all the cargo into the hull of the ship and have longshoremen on the other end pull it out and sort it.

While there were certainly 10-15 years between the beginning of the containerization of the Bay Area and when the Millennium Falcon was designed, it's entirely plausible that Lucas'- and his design team's- idea of what a cargo freighter "should" look like was firmly in his head from before the design of that ship. And so he/they would have built something that would operate much more like a standard break bulk freighter.

However! Dave Filoni is younger. He was born when Containerization was the norm, and has grown up well into the age of the Cargo Container ship. When the Ghost was being built and designed, the folks at Lucasfilm had a very different understanding of how the world would and should work. And so the Ghost has an external cargo area that we can see in many episodes. And when we look at cargo in the Rebels show, we can see that the vast majority of it is containerized- and that cargo ships build for the show are very clearly designed for containers first, people second- much the same way that modern cargo ships are built.

I like this theory. It fits. But I think by ESB they had already realized their mistake with the freighters... The Medium Freighter is loaded with like-sized containers on the belly of it's clamshell design. Check your Epic ships.

It's all possible, due to the YT-1300 being a LIGHT freighter, that it's purpose was more that of a transport rig than a super freighter. Small crates as opposed to shipping containers.

Which begs the question... in space, is it better to push or pull?

Actually the main question is "where's the center of mass" when a long as hell "train" is pushed.

It it's too far from the thruster-maneuver engines, the train is unable to turn sharper than "oh god why"

Truth!

Material strength and composition matter also. Most things can stand to be stretched better than they can stand to be compressed. At the kind of acceleration needed to approach light speed.... that might matter a great deal. But that level of physics nit-picking is anathema to Star Wars mechanics.

Man, that makes so much sense. Han is driving a space tugboat, not a space semi-truck. The design makes sense again!

Flying on, all thru the night... Yee-whooo!!!

YT-1300 freighter ... a real mans ride!

... born when Containerization was the norm, and has grown up well into the age of the Cargo Container ship. When the Ghost was being built and designed, the folks at Lucasfilm had a very different understanding of how the world would and should work. And so the Ghost has an external cargo area that we can see in many episodes. And when we look at cargo in the Rebels show, we can see that the vast majority of it is containerized- and that cargo ships build for the show are very clearly designed for containers first, people second- much the same way that modern cargo ships are built.

...and Han's ship in the TFA:

That we saw for... three seconds.

Title: Action: Ramming SLAM. Execute a SLAM maneuver. If you overlap a ship, carry the ship forward to the end of your maneuver. The enemy ship suffers 1 damage.

Title: Action: Ramming SLAM. Execute a SLAM maneuver. If you overlap a ship, carry the ship forward to the end of your maneuver. The enemy ship suffers 1 damage.

Nah... you can't SLAM with that thing attached, it should just be like the HUGE Ships. If you get hit: you DIE!

YT-1300s might have been operated in pairs when moving cargo trains, one on each end. The engine design on the 1300 seems to be set up to facility thrust at vectors off the center of gravity, Probably to increase the ability to manuever trains from both ends.

Holy cow!!!

I just discovered that I actually know the artist who drew this picture. Jeff Carlisle, I do printing for him. He just made a Facebook post about how he mentioned the idea Pablo years ago and did the sketch to illustrate the concept to Jason Fry.

Love this conceptually . . . will try to make. Meanwhile, reminds me of something I made . . .

HWK-909T MILLENIUM TALON
BASE SHIP – HWK-290
MODIFIED SHIP STATISTICS
Firepower – 4
MODIFIED SYNERGISTIC SHIP STATISTICS (docked to Millenium Falcon)
Firepower – 6
Agility – 2
Hull – 9
Shields – 10
Additional Maneuver - Green 5 Straight (x2), White 5 K-Turn, White 2 K-Turn
Modified Maneuvers - Green 4 Straight (x2), White 4 K-Turn, Green 3 Straight/Turn/Bank, White 3 K-Turn
Special Rule - If destroyed, all ships within Range 3 suffer 2 Damage.
The rarest modded HWK-290, the HWK-909T, otherwise known as the Millenium Talon was retrofitted with 2 front-mounted stationary Alternating Ion-Laser Cannons. Further, a top-mounted cargo pod would feed plenty of small homing missiles. Honda Ohnaka had previously raided the Corellian Engineering Corp’s prototype fleet of Mini Rigs that could dock into a YT-1300. Most of the ships needed work, but Marvo Dishogan further hybridized the HWK-909T with a Shield Amplifying Mini Rig. Once docked into the Millenium Falcon specifically, the synergized Talon would super-conduct 6 additional cargo pods of enriched Tibanna Gas to boost the shields to at least double, as well as doubling the straightaway capacity. Of course, Ohnaka had to “borrow” the Falcon from Han Solo which was accomplished by underhanded gambling.

Now that's a reference.

I always assumed the Falcon was more of a hot rod than anything else (although UPS trucks have been souped up) since Lucas made American Graffiti before Star Wars. "She not look like much, but she's got it where it counts..." made it sound like there was a 440 V-8 lurking under the hood.