Two garrison duty star destroyers with possibly green crews caught by surprise. I'm fine with how that turned out. Even the ramming, though I think it would have been better served as self sacrifice rather than ordered doom. I'm also fine with how the battle ended. I would have been fine if the fleet got away, I had that moment of "yeah!" as the Rebels began escaping and the Devastator showing up battle ready was like a gut punch. Perfectly thematic ending to the battle.

As to why the ram... I think it was a moment of crazy inspiration. The admiral realized he could protect his fleet and take out the objective if he could push a disabled destroyer. Even if he had missed the second destroyer it would buy a moment of obstructed shots. High risk, high reward maneuver. I wasn't quite happy with how the destroyers came apart like a plastic building block display, but I'm willing to accept it.

And guys... Those spinning Xwings are not doing barrel rolls. Common misconception to non aviation people, but a barrel roll does not involve spinning around an axis within the center of the ship. A barrel roll involves a wider roll which is intended to shed speed, reposition, and make yourself harder to hit in the process. Google some dogfighting maneuvers.

I've got no problem with the Rebel fleet's initial success in the space battle at Scarif. It's the same old, same old situation with Rebel vs Imperial engagements that we've seen in videogames, EU stories etc for over 20 years now. It's the hyperdrive-equipped Rebels who ALWAYS had the early advantage during these engagements, using hit and fade tactics to take out targets of opportunity before Imperial forces could effectively respond (and before reinforcements arrived).

Look at what happens again.

The Rebel fleet exits hyperspace and immediately begins the attack, with the Y-Wings, X-Wings and U-Wings immediately making a run for their objectives.

The Imperials, meanwhile, have to bring the lumbering Star Destroyers about to face the threat, and scramble fighter teams to respond.

By the time the Imperial fighters in the area are able to react and begin their engagement, Blue Squadron has already breached the planetary shield and X-Wings have already taken down one of the Star Destroyers' shield generators, leaving it vulnerable for the Y-Wing's Ion Torpedoes.

Despite these early victories, the longer the engagement goes on, the more it swings in the Imperial's favour. The Rebel's tactics become more and more desperate (ramming the crippled Star Destroyer). The remaining Rebel fleet is trying to bug out as Imperial reinforcements arrive (and go to town).

As far as canon and EU stories of Imperial/Rebel space battles go, this is pretty much spot on. Hell, this scenario is EXACTLY why we saw the Imperial arms race story in the X-Wing PC games, and the development of the TIE Avenger, TIE Defender and (yes) the Assault Gunboat: Rebel hyperspace assault /hit and fade tactics were having a LOT of success against Imperial forces.

As far as this games forum goes - someone tell me how two Imperial ISD I's would fare against a fleet comprising of a Mon Calamari Cruiser,escorted by a couple of Nebulon B Frigates and several corvettes in a game of Armada.

They should be around equal on points. Long story short: it should be pretty like in the movie.

+As veteran x-wing (alliance) player i loved you analysis!

it was a one-sided battle, once reinforcements arrived. If the 2 measily ISDs were capable of fending off the ENTIRE REBEL FLEET then what the frack to they even bother having a rebel fleet for? ISDs arent the largest ships they got by a loooong shot.

The fact that they had to resort to the hammerhead strat was baffling enough. I was expecting a focus fire order to get the result we had on the gate, not a ram.

In oooolllddd (around 90's published) guide to ships ISD was described as being able to battle whole rebel fleets. 2 of those should be able to withstand such a fleet.

I think there were 2 Nebulons, 3-4 corellian corvettes, 2-3 dormean gunships (the braha'tok or however you spell it), plus a couple of hammerhead corvettes and GR75 transports. The Mon Cal ship (identified as the Profundity in the visual guide, a MC-75 cruiser) is 1,200 metres in length and appears to be one of the first mon cal ship ever retrofitted for military duty and it's armaments (sourced again from the visual guide) aren't even half that of an ISD. That's not an especially big fleet, honestly, made of mostly small ships that would maybe be able to stand toe-to-toe with one ISD - but two should be wrecking house.

Honestly, going off from pretty much everything ever written about Star Destroyers in the old canon - the two stationed above Scarif should have been able to decimate the rebel fleet. Couple that with the obvious fighter advantage - Red, Blue and Gold squadron,possibly Green squadron too - so 24 x-wings and 24 y-wings tops - against a massive swarm of TIEs (the station's garrison on its own appeared to be at least twice the size of the rebel squadrons, if not way more). Fighting against Star Destoryers was always a delaying action in the games you mention - you needed to hold them off long enough for your fleet to complete its task and jump out. The fact that those are games and a single x-wing could take down an ISD by itself is more an indicator of game mechanics, than of the actual battle capabilities.

What Vader and the Devastator do at the end - that's what a Star Destroyer is. He comes in and in less than a minute wrecks a Nebulon, a couple of corvettes and the Profundity is immobilised and ready to be boarded. The battle shouldn't have been exactly one-sided . . . but from what we saw it was looking like an almost easy rebel victory.

Nah man, you've got a rebel fleet that ounumbers the Imperials by at least five to one, with the element of surprise and superior morale. I'm surprised those ISDs even had time to raise their shields, let alone scramble the crews to battle stations. Half of them probably had to wake up and get their pants on before they even left their cabins, let alone ran along the hundreds of metres of corridors to their stations. These weren't experienced crews in a situation of battle readiness, they'd never even BEEN in a battle before, as far as they were concerned there wasn't even an enemy fleet anywhere in the galaxy to do battle with! Then suddenly there's dozens of enemy ships pounding them senseless and fighters tearing them up with ordnance strikes...

And even with all those advantages the rebels took significant casualties, and then as soon as the Devastator enters the fray the odds tip 100% in favour of the Imperials. It took everything the rebels had to drop those two ISDs.

The space battle was *brilliant*.

Look, I get it from a storytelling perspective. I get from the ANH opening crawl perspective of "the rebelellion's first real victory" of whatever. But there were better ways to do it. One of the main rules of storytelling is that your heroes are only as good, as your villains are bad. Look at stormtroopers - they're regularly meant to look like chumps . . . despite Obi-Wan's line of "only a stormtrooper's aim is so precise". Same with the Star Destroyers - in the old movies they were these terrifying things, Ackbar was terrified of the idea of bringing the Rebel Fleet (and we're talking the real rebel fleet, with proper battleships) against the Imperial Fleet. Same with Hobbie in ESB - "two fighters and a transport against a Star Destroyer". Everybody seemed terrified. And when your heroes overcome a threat like that - it makes them appear more heroic.

I wouldn't have minded the dumb cartoon "ram them" tactic. I have issues with the physics of it - I really can't see how a Star Destroyer can pick up so much inertia that it cuts clean through the shields and armour plating of another Star Destoryer (not to mention that they should have been able to avoid the collision - see the two Star Destroyers in ESB not colliding, despite Han's efforts). OK, the crews weren't that experienced . . . but you're talking about the crew of the Star Destroyer, what do you mean "not experienced" ? Crews onboard modern aircraft carriers in the US navy, despite not seeing full active duty (meaning large scale war, thank god) still have daily drills and, theoretically, should be able to respond quickly. You're telling me that the Empire - a massive galaxy-spanning MILITARY FOCUSED regime - has inexperienced crews onboard its largerst ships, the very symbol of their dominance ?

And don't pull the "they didn't even know they have an enemy" excuse. Even in this movie we get some mention of other rebel attacks, we know from the Rebels cartoons that the Empire is aware there is an open military rebellion against them. Hell, they build the DEATH STAR exactly because they know there's a threat to their regime in the face of the Rebellion and they wish to squash it.

I don't mind that the Rebellion won - I mind that the Empire was made to look like a bunch of chumps until the Devastator's arrival. Have the rebel fleet surprise the two star destroyers and ionize one, sure. Have the rest of the fleet focus fire on the other one. But you're still talking about a massive purpose-built warship facing off against a rag-tag bunch of misfits. And don't pull the 5:1 numerical advantage card. From history we know plenty of examples were numerical advantage has meant diddly-squat against superior firepower. And this is the case here. Going off the visual guide, each ISD has 60 turbolasers, plus the 8 long-range heavy turbolaser batteries. As per the visual guide again - the Profundity (admiral Raddu's flagship) has 12 (!) turbolasers. There's your real 5:1 advantage. The rest of the rebel fleet is small ships. All of them pooling their firepower together - maybe it's enough to make it a fair fight against one ISD. Not two.

Make it seem even at first. Sure. The rebels lose some ships, but the active ISD is starting to get crippled. And just as they're about the land the killing blow - the second one comes back online and turns the tide. And then you can have the crew of the hammerhead sacrificing themselves for the cause. Hell, make it Raddus that sacrifices the flagship, because there's no other way - for the rest of the fleet to survive and for the Tantive to be able to get away, the Profundity rams the remaining Star Destroyer. That would have made for a better story, in my eyes.

I loved both battles.

It's been said but the Imperial force wasn't 'the' or even "an" Imperial Fleet. It's a two ship garrison squadron.

They are surprised and slow to react. The Imperials have enemies but we have no canon examples of fleet actions preceding Rogue One that I can think of?

Despite their success the Rebel Admiral can't give the order to GTFO soon enough which fits in with the hit and run tactics we know the rebellion had to adopt.

That said, the ram was a bit naff. Having it be what takers out the shield gate is fine but it it could have been better to have the Mon Cal ship take out the other ISD would explain how it's almost effortlessly disabled once Devastator comes in.

Have to say I love the face meet wall moment for the transport as it comes out of hyperspace!

I've only seen it once but I have to say, i didnt come away with any of the complaints I've seen from that my first viewing.

My only compliance is from the Tantive an dLeia being there at all. I do think that was lazy writing.

I had a different conception of how the battle, in which Rebel spies captured the Death Star plans, went down.

There were changes made to the U-Wing, with the biggest being that the troops disembarking from the side, not from the front. (Look at the card "Inspiring Recruit".)

Finally, why did the Rebel fleet not consider sending a ship to retrieve the surviving members of Rogue One? Even if the ship could not get back into space, it could do a hyperspace jump in the atmosphere.

some one say new X-wings?

So my point is, if it is a Rogue One tie in

then what are the odds we'll get theses three four.

The Hammerhead trick worked, I think, because it had several minutes of acceleration to work on the Star Destroyer. I do agree that it seemed to do a bit too much damage to the second SD, but that one could have taken a beating already.

Things I noticed and we're proud of outside of the normal comments which have been fun to read.

The self sacrifice and wanting of a second chance by the volunteers on rogue one was inspiring.

The fact that the mon cal decided to fight even after the council voted it to much of a risk was awesome. Especially if you remember how bad ass they were during the clone wars cartoon.

I think I counted the ghost flying by at least 4 times 3 for sure.

The self sacrifice of the hammerhead. It's clear the rebels know the threat is so bad it's all or nothing. We die winning or we loose everything.

Stick man and his buddy left me wanting a spin off movie of there earlier years. Best part of the movie was magic stick man.

The space Battle left me wanting more y wings and wish we could have seen more of the smaller ships fighting. The hammerhead was cool but again the damage to the second ISD looked like when you drop legos.

Why we didn't see toys made of krennics tie striker specials or his shuttle or even the Imperial transports or blue squadrons wings I don't understand. I know Lego did krennics shuttle but if I saw it in the 3 3/4 inch line would have wrote a blank check.

I think this is second best star wars movie behind ESB.

Y-wings! Dropping bombs! Firing Ion torpedoes!

See FFG? THIS is what Y Wings should be doing, not being super-dogfighters with TLTs or BTLA4 nonsense. Bombers and torpedo boats. Yes, that means they'd have a more natural home in Epic games than in 100/6 but you know what? It's better that way. Not everything needs to be crammed into 100/6 dogfights.

And they are awesome in Armada..

Hi Folks!

I just finished updating all of the Ships in the latest PDF's (Regular & Special Edition) up to Wave X & Heroes of the Resistance.

Merry Christmas to you and your family! God bless !

Hi Folks, just wanted to let you know that I've updated both of the PDF's up to Wave X, ready to print! God bless!

Y'know, those who think the Star Destroyers shouldn't have been beaten so easily should recall a similar surprise attack by fighters against some really badass ships: Pearl Harbor. Those ships were perfectly outfitted to demolish every fighter the Japanese sent at them, and if they had been at a state of readiness, they wouldn't have suffered nearly the same losses they did. But because they were unprepared (a huge number of sailors were at church instead of being on their ships and many were asleep), all the big battleships were sunk. They put up a good fight, but if those ships had been fully at the ready, the Japanese wouldn't have won that battle.

The Rebels only won this one because they caught the Empire completely by surprise, and the Empire had even more arrogance than the Americans did because of their power. Maybe the ships were moving, but I guarantee you the gunners, engineers, soldiers, and fighter pilots aboard those ships were not prepared for battle. They probably were complacent because of the remote location of the planet and the fact that they were strongly defended, and complacency equals death in warfare. Many of them were probably still in bed or in the break rooms, just hanging out and probably assuming the klaxons blaring were drills ("Do you know what's going on?" "Maybe it's another drill..."). And this means they lost time getting ready for battle, both physically and mentally. Many of the shots fired went wide, probably because the gunners were green or out of practice. The fighters were effective, but only because of the numbers. If they hadn't been so clumsy and arrogant, and had been at a state of readiness, they probably would have won. But as it was, they weren't.

And Vader. OMFG. Vader. I cried.

And reusing the old footage from A New Hope. Pure GENIOUS!!!

Hera also got a name drop. Right after the scene when Bail left Mon Mothma and it cut to Jyn out in the hangar with Cassian, over the base comm you can hear "General Syndulla, report to the briefing room, General Syndulla, report to the briefing room."

General Syndulla should be her father, right? ;-)

@all, it would have been nice to see a more one-sided Space Battle. It seems to be a huge waste of time building these SD if they can't even handle a company of Y-WINGs and a TUGBOAT.

Perhaps you missed the sh1tl0ad of rebel capital ships that those two star destroyers had to deal with? I counted at least 5 frigates, same number of CR-90s, a lot of hammerhead ones, the big new rebel capital ship... and my numbers are quite conservative. All those ships weren't probably just looking pretty. They were firing turbolasers at the destroyers.

Plus I saw X-Wing squadrons attacking the star destroyers' shield generators and blowing them up.

Then, and only then, came the group of Y-wings with ion torpedoes to disable them.

The space battle looks spot on after my 23 years of playing the X-Wing PC simulators. The star destroyers are great at keeping a civilian fleet under control thru fear. But they are not invulnerable against a party of capital ships and bombers doing exactly what is needed to knock them out.

The hammerhead part was just a bit of sadism by the Rebel admiral, even if effective at destroying the shield gate.

Also, as others say, it was a surprise attack. It caught the Empire with their pants down. They weren't expecting an attack. They didn't even have a proper enemy until that day.

One thing was off and that was slamming one ISD into another with the hammerhead. Tractor beams should have been able to resolve that problem without much problems. Outside of that I really liked the space battle. The ground battle at the other hand was a mockery.

@all, it would have been nice to see a more one-sided Space Battle. It seems to be a huge waste of time building these SD if they can't even handle a company of Y-WINGs and a TUGBOAT.

Perhaps you missed the sh1tl0ad of rebel capital ships that those two star destroyers had to deal with? I counted at least 5 frigates, same number of CR-90s, a lot of hammerhead ones, the big new rebel capital ship... and my numbers are quite conservative. All those ships weren't probably just looking pretty. They were firing turbolasers at the destroyers.

Plus I saw X-Wing squadrons attacking the star destroyers' shield generators and blowing them up.

Then, and only then, came the group of Y-wings with ion torpedoes to disable them.

The space battle looks spot on after my 23 years of playing the X-Wing PC simulators. The star destroyers are great at keeping a civilian fleet under control thru fear. But they are not invulnerable against a party of capital ships and bombers doing exactly what is needed to knock them out.

The hammerhead part was just a bit of sadism by the Rebel admiral, even if effective at destroying the shield gate.

Also, as others say, it was a surprise attack. It caught the Empire with their pants down. They weren't expecting an attack. They didn't even have a proper enemy until that day.

I think there were 2 Nebulons, 3-4 corellian corvettes, 2-3 dormean gunships (the braha'tok or however you spell it), plus a couple of hammerhead corvettes and GR75 transports. The Mon Cal ship (identified as the Profundity in the visual guide, a MC-75 cruiser) is 1,200 metres in length and appears to be one of the first mon cal ship ever retrofitted for military duty and it's armaments (sourced again from the visual guide) aren't even half that of an ISD. That's not an especially big fleet, honestly, made of mostly small ships that would maybe be able to stand toe-to-toe with one ISD - but two should be wrecking house.

Honestly, going off from pretty much everything ever written about Star Destroyers in the old canon - the two stationed above Scarif should have been able to decimate the rebel fleet. Couple that with the obvious fighter advantage - Red, Blue and Gold squadron,possibly Green squadron too - so 24 x-wings and 24 y-wings tops - against a massive swarm of TIEs (the station's garrison on its own appeared to be at least twice the size of the rebel squadrons, if not way more). Fighting against Star Destoryers was always a delaying action in the games you mention - you needed to hold them off long enough for your fleet to complete its task and jump out. The fact that those are games and a single x-wing could take down an ISD by itself is more an indicator of game mechanics, than of the actual battle capabilities.

It was a surprise attack, the rebels got their fighters onto the ISD before most of the enemy fighters were able to come into play AND they used a cheap trick to catch the second one by surprise, destroying both and the shields in the process. Thrawn would have killed the captain and all tractor beam operators for their incompetence … if they would not have died on the crash against the shields ;-)

And btw, I insisted in X-Wing to clear out the star destroyers still, a single X-Wing usually was enough, especially if you did not play on hard and could blow up the shield domes while the shields still active … in that case it was trivial, on hard it was a sisyphus work as you had to down the shields first for half an hour, then blow up the shield domes and then fire at the hull for another 10 minutes or so ^-^

I think there were 2 Nebulons, 3-4 corellian corvettes, 2-3 dormean gunships (the braha'tok or however you spell it), plus a couple of hammerhead corvettes and GR75 transports. The Mon Cal ship (identified as the Profundity in the visual guide, a MC-75 cruiser) is 1,200 metres in length and appears to be one of the first mon cal ship ever retrofitted for military duty and it's armaments (sourced again from the visual guide) aren't even half that of an ISD. That's not an especially big fleet, honestly, made of mostly small ships that would maybe be able to stand toe-to-toe with one ISD - but two should be wrecking house.

Honestly, going off from pretty much everything ever written about Star Destroyers in the old canon - the two stationed above Scarif should have been able to decimate the rebel fleet. Couple that with the obvious fighter advantage - Red, Blue and Gold squadron,possibly Green squadron too - so 24 x-wings and 24 y-wings tops - against a massive swarm of TIEs (the station's garrison on its own appeared to be at least twice the size of the rebel squadrons, if not way more). Fighting against Star Destoryers was always a delaying action in the games you mention - you needed to hold them off long enough for your fleet to complete its task and jump out. The fact that those are games and a single x-wing could take down an ISD by itself is more an indicator of game mechanics, than of the actual battle capabilities.

What Vader and the Devastator do at the end - that's what a Star Destroyer is. He comes in and in less than a minute wrecks a Nebulon, a couple of corvettes and the Profundity is immobilised and ready to be boarded. The battle shouldn't have been exactly one-sided . . . but from what we saw it was looking like an almost easy rebel victory.

Nah man, you've got a rebel fleet that ounumbers the Imperials by at least five to one, with the element of surprise and superior morale. I'm surprised those ISDs even had time to raise their shields, let alone scramble the crews to battle stations. Half of them probably had to wake up and get their pants on before they even left their cabins, let alone ran along the hundreds of metres of corridors to their stations. These weren't experienced crews in a situation of battle readiness, they'd never even BEEN in a battle before, as far as they were concerned there wasn't even an enemy fleet anywhere in the galaxy to do battle with! Then suddenly there's dozens of enemy ships pounding them senseless and fighters tearing them up with ordnance strikes...

And even with all those advantages the rebels took significant casualties, and then as soon as the Devastator enters the fray the odds tip 100% in favour of the Imperials. It took everything the rebels had to drop those two ISDs.

The space battle was *brilliant*.

Look, I get it from a storytelling perspective. I get from the ANH opening crawl perspective of "the rebelellion's first real victory" of whatever. But there were better ways to do it. One of the main rules of storytelling is that your heroes are only as good, as your villains are bad. Look at stormtroopers - they're regularly meant to look like chumps . . . despite Obi-Wan's line of "only a stormtrooper's aim is so precise". Same with the Star Destroyers - in the old movies they were these terrifying things, Ackbar was terrified of the idea of bringing the Rebel Fleet (and we're talking the real rebel fleet, with proper battleships) against the Imperial Fleet. Same with Hobbie in ESB - "two fighters and a transport against a Star Destroyer". Everybody seemed terrified. And when your heroes overcome a threat like that - it makes them appear more heroic.

I wouldn't have minded the dumb cartoon "ram them" tactic. I have issues with the physics of it - I really can't see how a Star Destroyer can pick up so much inertia that it cuts clean through the shields and armour plating of another Star Destoryer (not to mention that they should have been able to avoid the collision - see the two Star Destroyers in ESB not colliding, despite Han's efforts). OK, the crews weren't that experienced . . . but you're talking about the crew of the Star Destroyer, what do you mean "not experienced" ? Crews onboard modern aircraft carriers in the US navy, despite not seeing full active duty (meaning large scale war, thank god) still have daily drills and, theoretically, should be able to respond quickly. You're telling me that the Empire - a massive galaxy-spanning MILITARY FOCUSED regime - has inexperienced crews onboard its largerst ships, the very symbol of their dominance ?

And don't pull the "they didn't even know they have an enemy" excuse. Even in this movie we get some mention of other rebel attacks, we know from the Rebels cartoons that the Empire is aware there is an open military rebellion against them. Hell, they build the DEATH STAR exactly because they know there's a threat to their regime in the face of the Rebellion and they wish to squash it.

I don't mind that the Rebellion won - I mind that the Empire was made to look like a bunch of chumps until the Devastator's arrival. Have the rebel fleet surprise the two star destroyers and ionize one, sure. Have the rest of the fleet focus fire on the other one. But you're still talking about a massive purpose-built warship facing off against a rag-tag bunch of misfits. And don't pull the 5:1 numerical advantage card. From history we know plenty of examples were numerical advantage has meant diddly-squat against superior firepower. And this is the case here. Going off the visual guide, each ISD has 60 turbolasers, plus the 8 long-range heavy turbolaser batteries. As per the visual guide again - the Profundity (admiral Raddu's flagship) has 12 (!) turbolasers. There's your real 5:1 advantage. The rest of the rebel fleet is small ships. All of them pooling their firepower together - maybe it's enough to make it a fair fight against one ISD. Not two.

Make it seem even at first. Sure. The rebels lose some ships, but the active ISD is starting to get crippled. And just as they're about the land the killing blow - the second one comes back online and turns the tide. And then you can have the crew of the hammerhead sacrificing themselves for the cause. Hell, make it Raddus that sacrifices the flagship, because there's no other way - for the rest of the fleet to survive and for the Tantive to be able to get away, the Profundity rams the remaining Star Destroyer. That would have made for a better story, in my eyes.

You ignore here the firepower advantage of the rebel fleet thanks to torpedos and bombs. And as this was a surprise attack and for whatever reason the ground forces did not alert the navy in orbit about the attack … no imperial fighters were launched before the rebel fighters basically had already the first ISD down. That part was imo fine. It becomes retarded when the kinetic energy of a single hammerhead corvette is enough to destroy the second star destroyer.

If their kinetic shields are that weak than Vader should have died when ships at near lightspeed collided with his ship and the rebels should have have won the battle with only losing three unmanned hammerheads. One for each ISD. Adding maybe another one to piece the shields. It really is hollywood bull when someone thinks it will look cool, but does not even bother to think about what actually happens to achieve this visual. Technical it would destroy the whole spacebattle if you just not ignore it and take it what it is: A brain fart of some hollywood writer.

One thing was off and that was slamming one ISD into another with the hammerhead. Tractor beams should have been able to resolve that problem without much problems.

Well, the ISD that was being rammed was disabled by Ion weapons, so no tractor beams. And the first ISD was probably way to big to be tractor beamed by the second.

If their kinetic shields are that weak than Vader should have died when ships at near lightspeed collided with his ship

That only happened in the Legendsverse comics as I recall.

One thing was off and that was slamming one ISD into another with the hammerhead. Tractor beams should have been able to resolve that problem without much problems.

Well, the ISD that was being rammed was disabled by Ion weapons, so no tractor beams. And the first ISD was probably way to big to be tractor beamed by the second.

How big the ISD is rather unimportant when all the kinetic energy it has is from the engines of a tiny corvette. Those two ISDs colliding has the energy equivalent of the 2nd ISD colliding directly with the corvette.

And let me add to this. If we calculate weapon strengths for star wars weapons based on rogue one we end up with a galaxy which has weaker weapons than modern earth and only Kyber-Crystal weapons have outlandish energy outputs. Furthermore a single X-Wing ramming an ISD at lightspeed will kill it. As a very slow moving, but huge object has altered enough kinetic energy to utterly rip apart a shielded stardestroyer.

Making me thing, what or those hulls made of? Milk Foam and soap bubbles?

And don't get me started on the attack against the landing platform which killed Erso … warg. The United states is using drones with more firepower. ^-^

. Furthermore a single X-Wing ramming an ISD at lightspeed will kill it.

If hyperspace is another dimension - then "lightspeed ramming" becomes impossible.

. Furthermore a single X-Wing ramming an ISD at lightspeed will kill it.

If hyperspace is another dimension - then "lightspeed ramming" becomes impossible.

You come out of hyperspace at lightspeed and you enter hyperspace at lightspeed. At least that was how it was supposed to work. But jumping into hyperspace that way while still in a atmosphere makes it odd anyway especially as flimsy as starships are in the new canon. Personal scale weapons have no issues with shooting down fighters becomes illogical if the fighters shields can sustain acceleration to lightspeed without trouble. That has not been an issue with the OT has even star destroyers could do a DBZ operation just fine with their 5 gigatons per shot turbolasers, but it becomes vastly inconsistent with the new canon.

Rogue one has turbolasers less powerful than modern military weapons. ;-)

How big the ISD is rather unimportant when all the kinetic energy it has is from the engines of a tiny corvette. Those two ISDs colliding has the energy equivalent of the 2nd ISD colliding directly with the corvette.

Kinetic energy = mass of impactor x velcity².

The square of the velocity is the important factor as if you double the speed, you quadruple the energy. This means that the kinetic energy of the impact actually has nothing to do with the mass of the Corvette at all. It is the mass of the Star Destroyer times the square of its velocity.

Or to put it another way, if you have the time to build up some speed, you will impart a lot more kinetic energy.

Physics-wise, there was nothing wrong with that ram maneuver. It raises questions about how effective their particle shields are. But as we saw in ESB, asteroids can do severe damage to a shielded SD. The ionised SD obviously couldn't use tractor beams since it was dead in the water until they got their systems back online. The SD that got rammed possibly could/should have done something. But remember, on screen, we have only ever seen tractor beams used to pull objects in closer, maybe they simply don't have a "push mode".

Also, tractor beaming a Star Destroyer will do basically nothing. Tractor beams are for moving small ships around.

The only issue I really had with that scene was that the push worked in the first place rather than just compressing/stabbing the corvette into the SD. Once I got over that the rest was fine.

You come out of hyperspace at lightspeed and you enter hyperspace at lightspeed. At least that was how it was supposed to work.

According to people like Saxton, yes. Presumably some of that is gone now - with it being "pseudomotion" as per the EU, rather than real acceleration.

How big the ISD is rather unimportant when all the kinetic energy it has is from the engines of a tiny corvette. Those two ISDs colliding has the energy equivalent of the 2nd ISD colliding directly with the corvette.

They were in fairly low orbit so you've also got the weight of the disabled ISD. It was probably taking all the backup power it had not to fall on the shield gate.

The only issue I really had with that scene was that the push worked in the first place rather than just compressing/stabbing the corvette into the SD. Once I got over that the rest was fine.

The corvette is shielded, the ISD isn't. The hammerhead of the Hammerhead provides a fairly large surface area hence that model of corvette being used. The ISD, as evidenced by moving at all, isn't able to maintain its position with the Hammerhead ramming it.