But to me the way technology is used breaks down if ships can track each other in hyperspace. You can bet your ass that any of my blockade ships are gonna be packing a buttload of hyperspace homing torpedoes and be praying for some one to jump to hyper. If I can steer in hyper then life on smugglers, and a surprise attack on a system just got pretty impossible because I'm gonna keep sentries circling the system in hyperspace. My key star systems are going to have batteries of corvette sized missiles to launch into hyper to target approaching enemy capital ships.

For me it's the opposite. Chases through hyperspace have always been a part of how I imagine Star Wars to work. How else did Vader track Leia to Tatooine? Here's my though regarding the issues you mentioned...

Homing Torps: Judging by the show it's entirely possible that these devices require shield be down for them to work. This greatly limits their military usefulness. But, even if you did manage to get one on an enemy ship, it's still possible for them to detect the device (as happened in the show) and lead you away from their intended target. But, as shown in ESB, it's probably a good idea for ships trying to break a blockade to all go different directions and meet at a rendezvous point later once they're sure they aren't being tracked. Plus, this could be used to someone's advantage by having a ship flee with the blockader going into hyperspace to chase it, only to have the real cargo slip by Road Warrior-style.

Circling Ships: ESB, RotJ, and several episodes of The Clone Wars shows that you can detect ships in hyperspace quite a ways away and know when they're showing up slightly before they get there. So there's no reason to have ships circling a spot when you can just put out a bunch of hyperspace sensors for advanced warning. Plus, the attackers can possibly detect these circling ship thus alerting them to the fact that they have been detected.

Hyperspace Missiles: Ok, this is a general issue with Star Wars (esp for games like Armada). Missiles in this game are small short ranged affairs when a larger, much more powerful ICBM-sized missile might come in handy. Consider the battle at the beginning of RotS. Coruscant could easily have had hundreds of giant missiles to blast those attacking droid ships out of the sky. They didn't use giant Ion Cannons either which is a similar issue.

Even still, a hyperspace missile would have to be significantly faster than it's target or it would be blasted apart before it could hit. Since ISDs are super fast already, it's could be that it simply isn't possible or cost effective to build a missile that would work against them. Also, early ISD blueprints showed they carrying mines which would be perfect to discourage pursuit.

Which reminds me, I'll have to add rules for mines in my hyperspace chase scenario.

I always imagined that jumping to hyperspace was pretty much a straight shot, so you ploy a course jump to the next point reposition your angle and then launch again.

From what I can gather, the straight-shot hyperspace idea comes from the early WEG RPG material. Which is frustrating for me because the Tantive IV clearly changes course in hyperspace in the Star Wars Radio Drama which was canon at the time the RPG was being written.

From what I can gather, the straight-shot hyperspace idea comes from the early WEG RPG material. Which is frustrating for me because the Tantive IV clearly changes course in hyperspace in the Star Wars Radio Drama which was canon at the time the RPG was being written.

Pretty sure the idea that you can't change course in hyperspace comes from needing to make precise calculations BEFORE you jump. If you can change course after you jump you wouldn't need to calculate the course in advance.

As for Trek, the episodes I can remember, the early shows always had them fighting and changing course while in warp, but in later DS9, Voyager and Enterprise they always had to drop out of warp and fight at Impulse speeds.

This video has some battles at warp speeds, around the 4:30 mark we see some scenes from Voyager, DS9, TNG, and Enterprise. Don't know why they put music there.

I really need to rewatch the original trilogy, because I have no memory of the Star Destroyers following the Falcon.

They didn't have a ISD interior set to shoot an interior "going to hyperspace" shot and they didn't develop the exterior zipping hyperspace jump shot until ESB. But, if the Star Destroyers hadn't jumped to follow the Falcon, Han's line of "I told you I'd outrun them" makes no sense as he was clearly not outrunning them while at sub-light.

I mean, how could one ship follow another, anyway, without having access to its coordinates? You could plot along their escape vector, of course, but that would take time and being even a tiny bit off would leave you far removed from your target (unless you saw a system lying in that direction that you could reasonably assume was their goal).

I'm not sure what your point is. If you can detect other ships in hyperspace, you just turn to go towards them. You only need to make sure you jump shortly after they do, and in the same direction, so they don't get out of range. [Just like the scene in AotC when Obi Wan tracks Jango]

And you've always been able to communicate between sub-light and hyperspace. Otherwise, the tracking device they used to track the Falcon to the Rebel Base couldn't work.

I always took the "outrun them" line to mean simply that he had escaped to hyperspace before they could catch him. It could mean what you say, but it doesn't have to.

As for your second point, that assumes that 1. you can detect "nearby" ships in hyperspace while in hyperspace, and 2. that you can turn while in hyperspace. 1 I may be willing to grant (though I'm not entirely sure it fits with my understanding of hyperspace) but 2 I simply don't accept.

Also, why is sub-light to hyperspace communication required to track a ship? Why couldn't the tracking device simply transmit its location once the Falcon reverted to sub-light space?

Pretty sure the idea that you can't change course in hyperspace comes from needing to make precise calculations BEFORE you jump. If you can change course after you jump you wouldn't need to calculate the course in advance.

If you can't change course while still in hyperspace, you can always drop out of hyperspace, calculate a new course, and go back into hyperspace. You never need to actually calculate your entire course at one time as you can do it in legs with waypoints along the way. So when Han was escaping Tatooine, in neither case does he actually have to calculate the entire course to Alderaan as he only needed to get out of the system to avoid getting plastered.

Therefore, whether or not you can change course in hyperspace has no bearing on how long it takes to make the calculations to jump to light speed. You can either plot a temporary course and change it while in hyperspace or you can plot a short course and plot the longer course later when you aren't in a rush.

In other words, the ability to change course has no effect on the "dusting crop" dialog.

I always took the "outrun them" line to mean simply that he had escaped to hyperspace before they could catch him. It could mean what you say, but it doesn't have to.

Why would Han wait until the very end of a trip to say that and then expect congratulations from people who where there when it happened hours ago? Also, in the novelization, right before Han says this line, he's checking his sensors to make sure he isn't being tracked anymore.

Also, why is sub-light to hyperspace communication required to track a ship? Why couldn't the tracking device simply transmit its location once the Falcon reverted to sub-light space?

There are three instances of hyperspace tracking in the movies: Vader tracking Leia, the Death Star tracking the Falcon, and Obi-wan tracking Jango leaving Kamino. In two of those three instances, the chaser drops out of hyperspace immediately. Vader drops out a close range to the Tantive IV and Obi-wan drop out just 10 seconds or so after Jango. Unless you say that the entire trip from Kamino to Geonosis takes 10 seconds, Obi-wan had to be in hyperpace at the same time as Jango.

Pretty sure the idea that you can't change course in hyperspace comes from needing to make precise calculations BEFORE you jump. If you can change course after you jump you wouldn't need to calculate the course in advance.

If you can't change course while still in hyperspace, you can always drop out of hyperspace, calculate a new course, and go back into hyperspace. You never need to actually calculate your entire course at one time as you can do it in legs with waypoints along the way. So when Han was escaping Tatooine, in neither case does he actually have to calculate the entire course to Alderaan as he only needed to get out of the system to avoid getting plastered.

Therefore, whether or not you can change course in hyperspace has no bearing on how long it takes to make the calculations to jump to light speed. You can either plot a temporary course and change it while in hyperspace or you can plot a short course and plot the longer course later when you aren't in a rush.

In other words, the ability to change course has no effect on the "dusting crop" dialog.

Even a short jump can cover a LONG distance in sub-light space. Blind jumping into hyperspace is INCREDIBLY dangerous, regardless of the duration.

I always took the "outrun them" line to mean simply that he had escaped to hyperspace before they could catch him. It could mean what you say, but it doesn't have to.

Why would Han wait until the very end of a trip to say that and then expect congratulations from people who where there when it happened hours ago? Also, in the novelization, right before Han says this line, he's checking his sensors to make sure he isn't being tracked anymore.

Also, why is sub-light to hyperspace communication required to track a ship? Why couldn't the tracking device simply transmit its location once the Falcon reverted to sub-light space?

There are three instances of hyperspace tracking in the movies: Vader tracking Leia, the Death Star tracking the Falcon, and Obi-wan tracking Jango leaving Kamino. In two of those three instances, the chaser drops out of hyperspace immediately. Vader drops out a close range to the Tantive IV and Obi-wan drop out just 10 seconds or so after Jango. Unless you say that the entire trip from Kamino to Geonosis takes 10 seconds, Obi-wan had to be in hyperpace at the same time as Jango.

In movies, its very common to show things which should take days or weeks occurring in a matter of seconds or minutes, without so much as commenting on its true duration. I don't see a movie's abstraction as being proof of being able to track in hyperspace. As for the Tantive IV, are we ever told how it was tracked? Maybe they saw its exit vector, calculated which system it was likely to end up at, and caught up with it. We simply don't know.

Not sure about the timing thing with Han, but a simple Wikipedia search of the novelization shows numerous differences from the movie and discrepancies with established lore. I therefore do not recognize the novel as an authority in this matter.

I guess for me, the whole thing is just midichlorians all over again. I mean, hyperspace has a certain mystique about it, where it acts predictably enough for reliable travel, but it's definitely not normal space. The rules should be different in there (even though they can still be studied and known). If things work in hyperspace exactly like they do at sub-light, then it reduces hyperspace to simply going really, really fast, just like midichlorians tried to reduce the Force to a biology lesson.

I always took the "outrun them" line to mean simply that he had escaped to hyperspace before they could catch him. It could mean what you say, but it doesn't have to.

Why would Han wait until the very end of a trip to say that and then expect congratulations from people who where there when it happened hours ago? Also, in the novelization, right before Han says this line, he's checking his sensors to make sure he isn't being tracked anymore.

Also, why is sub-light to hyperspace communication required to track a ship? Why couldn't the tracking device simply transmit its location once the Falcon reverted to sub-light space?

There are three instances of hyperspace tracking in the movies: Vader tracking Leia, the Death Star tracking the Falcon, and Obi-wan tracking Jango leaving Kamino. In two of those three instances, the chaser drops out of hyperspace immediately. Vader drops out a close range to the Tantive IV and Obi-wan drop out just 10 seconds or so after Jango. Unless you say that the entire trip from Kamino to Geonosis takes 10 seconds, Obi-wan had to be in hyperpace at the same time as Jango.

or they got a good vector on them before they jumped and followed it. They dropped out when they detect a nearby ship dropping out. To me it seems like a ship entering or leaving hyperspace would create a large energy signature that's easy to pick up. Once they dropped out they'd try to get a vector on the ship they're chasing before it jumps again. Remember Jengo knew Obi-Wan was chasing them before he saw him. I'm thinking he picked up Obi-Wan coming out of hyper near him and put it together.