Just now, Woobyluv said:

Why do I have to?

Well you keep responding to me, so you may as well

1 minute ago, Ginkapo said:

Well you keep responding to me, so you may as well

I'm just a fan, if they want to pay me to make sure the crap they are shoveling passes the smell test, sure I'll do it. Assuming they listen in the fist place. All I can do, as a fan, is call them out for the crappy job they are doing and hope they get their act together.

2 minutes ago, Woobyluv said:

I'm just a fan, if they want to pay me to make sure the crap they are shoveling passes the smell test, sure I'll do it. Assuming they listen in the fist place. All I can do, as a fan, is call them out for the crappy job they are doing and hope they get their act together.

Actually, you can vote with your wallet. Seriously. I wasn't entertained by the last movie either. I watched it once and have made sure I told people in my social groups to pass on it. I also won't buy the Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital HD triple combo pack with the aluminum container and the hologram trading cards for a cool $99.99.

Just now, ricefrisbeetreats said:

Actually, you can vote with your wallet. Seriously. I wasn't entertained by the last movie either. I watched it once and have made sure I told people in my social groups to pass on it. I also won't buy the Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital HD triple combo pack with the aluminum container and the hologram trading cards for a cool $99.99.

Ok, I stand corrected, I can do two things.

2 hours ago, Woobyluv said:

Just stop! No one is expecting perfection. We ARE expecting consistency and for things to make sense. For all the many flaws of the previous movies, the story made sense (with a few notable exceptions). The tech made sense for the universe. The space wizardry made sense for the universe. It does not for the current iterations.

Wait how does it not make sense in the universe? Cos for me it absolutely does, and I can’t see where it doesn’t for you

40 minutes ago, Visovics said:

Wait how does it not make sense in the universe? Cos for me it absolutely does, and I can’t see where it doesn’t for you

Wow! Where should I start?

Nah, I don't need to rehash what is freely available on youtube.

3 minutes ago, Woobyluv said:

Wow! Where should I start?

Chronological or magnitude, whichever you prefer

1 minute ago, Visovics said:

Chronological or magnitude, whichever you prefer

Check my edited post, thanks.

5 minutes ago, Woobyluv said:

Check my edited post, thanks.

One of you needs to change your profile picture because it’s confusing me!

5 hours ago, ricefrisbeetreats said:

Actually, you can vote with your wallet. Seriously. I wasn't entertained by the last movie either. I watched it once and have made sure I told people in my social groups to pass on it. I also won't buy the Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital HD triple combo pack with the aluminum container and the hologram trading cards for a cool $99.99.

Gee thanks. Now I have to buy 2 Blu-Rays and see it again (in 3D next time) just to cancel your wallet out. ?

6 hours ago, Ginkapo said:

Deadly serious. You are all expecting a writer to be a superman. I'm sorry to break it to you, but they are human beings too. Flawed just like the rest of us.

They have things called Style Bibles. Establishes standards for the property. That's why Superman has a consistent look.

8 minutes ago, sithkhan said:

They have things called Style Bibles. Establishes standards for the property. That's why Superman has a consistent look.

And yet, it fails to protect us from Bat-Nipples. :D

11 hours ago, sithkhan said:

They have things called Style Bibles. Establishes standards for the property. That's why Superman has a consistent look.

This is what I was going to point out. If the writer's are free to just make the tech or The Force do whatever they need to do you end up with the plot driving the character's actions and not the character's actions driving the plot. It is a subtle but tremendously important distinction.

11 hours ago, Drasnighta said:

And yet, it fails to protect us from Bat-Nipples. :D

It fails to protect us from producers who won't tell their directors "No." It fails to protect us from producers who don't understand their purpose and importance or who don't bother with such things in the first place.

Let me get started by saying I love TLJ, and I love the direction Disney is taking the series. This is a great time to be a Star Wars fan, with quality new content being released regularly and a growing fanbase that's getting to enjoy these films.

That said, the movie appears to have opened up a can of worms many existing fans just can't seem to justify. Mainly, the weaponization of hyperspace.



The big question that seems to come up is,

If it's THAT powerful, why hasn't hyperspace been weaponized before?

Throughout the series there have been conflicts with massive stations and facilities that the rebels struggled to defeat, many of which posed a massive threat to the galaxy as well. It would seem that something portrayed so powerfully on screen would have been used much sooner as a weapon. Even if the rebellion would have used smaller pieces of debris or smaller unmanned ships the damaging effects would seem to be far more effective than using basic torpedoes and turbolasers. To answer this I think it's important take a look at what it is we're actually discussing. Define our terms, and clarify from there. This way we have clear understanding of what is actually being asked. To do this, why don't we ask the simple questions first.

What is hyperspace?

"Hyperspace is an alternate dimension that can only be reached by traveling at or faster than the speed of light".
-http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hyperspace

How does one achieve lightspeed?

"Hyperdrives allow starships to travel faster than the speed of light, crossing space through the alternate dimension of hyperspace."
-http://www.starwars.com/databank/hyperdrive


How do hyperdrives work?

"Hyperdrives manipulate hypermatter particles in order to thrust a starship into hyperspace by taking advantage of the wrinkles in the fabric of realspace, whilst still preserving the ship's mass/energy profile. This shortens journeying distance significantly, allowing the vessel to "jump" from a specific point to another without having to travel directly between them, therefore reducing journey time by an extraordinarily large margin"
-http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hyperspace


What do we learn by asking these questions?
A.) Hyperspace is another dimension that is not controlled by the rules of realspace, mainly due to how it exists over ripples of reality.
B.) When a ship achieves lightspeed, it is not doing so by use of conventional thrusters, but instead being thrust into hyperspace allowing the ship to travel across the wrinkles in reality.

This leads us to a more complicated but essential question.

How do objects in hyperspace interact with objects in real space?

Large objects in real space cast "mass shadows" in hyperspace, so hyperspace jumps necessitate very precise calculations. Without those, a vessel could fly right through a star or another celestial body.
-http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hyperspace


How large does an object need to be to cast a mass shadow?

This is our first official grey area in the lore. Even the legends are particularly sparse regarding this idea. It is generally suggested that these objects are not only larger than most ships, but often planetoid in size.

With this information, is it possible to close this can of "hyperspace attack" worms?

-It is entirely plausible, due to the way hyperspace exists over the folds of real space, for a ship to hyperspace through another ship in real space, given that the first ship is fully contained in hyperspace.

-It's entirely possible that most ships, even those the size of the supremacy, SSD, and up to the Death Star/Death Star II may lack enough gravitational force to create a "mass shadow" in hyperspace. (The lore makes a point of stating celestial bodies cause mass shadows but not much else, this could be reinforced with evidence from EP IV, when the falcon arrives at the debris field of Alderaan. You'll notice that the ship exits hyperspace and is immediately bombarded by debris, yet did not experience a mass shadow issue while in hyperspace. With that information we could conclude that it is possible some objects have little to no effect on other objects in hyperspace https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGp_5gOww0E ).

-Given the likelihood of the possibilities above, it's possible that hyperspace weapons were thought of, tested, and never refined. (It's important to keep in mind that the history and lore of Star Wars will never be 100% complete. There's 20,000 years of galactic history and hyperspace travel existed for most of that. There's no way we could ever have a complete history, but based on the information that's given, it's pretty easy to extrapolate the important details.)

So what could cause the idea of hyperspace weapons to not work? Why wouldn't the rebellion invest in them over conventional weapons?

a.) Common targets are not massive enough to generate mass shadows in hyper space. If we consider the Imperial class the staple of imperial might, the power behind the imperial forces, based on what's stated above it's quite likely that the ship just isn't big enough to hit in hyperspace. So even if the rebellion had started strapping engines and hyperdrives to debris or asteroids or torpedoes, there's a good chance they'd be ineffective in the ability to actually hit a ship the size of an ISD or smaller.

b.) Superweapons are typically a surprise in Star Wars. The canon verifies that the rebellion had very little time to plan for an attack against the death star in EP IV. Even if the Death Star was large enough to create a mass shadow, which, there isn't any real evidence to suggest it was, it was basically a surprise. They'd have had no time to develop or test hyperspace weapons.

c.) Staying hidden after the destruction of the death Star was a priority, especially with the imperial fleet engaging the rebel fleet so aggressively. Testing hyperspace weapons could become difficult, and again, the rebellion would be faced with a lack of appropriately sized targets. At that point investing in conventional weapons makes more sense than testing hyperspace weapons that are unlikely to have a valid target. Even if the cost savings over traditional ships made sense, the rebellion was well funded enough to care about the effectiveness of it's weapons.

d.) Traps are designed to draw targets out. The only real chance the rebellion would have had to test hyperspace weapons would have been on the deathstar II. Given the size of the DS2, even while in complete, it could have had enough mass to create a shdow in hyperspace and be a real target, but even that isn't 100% certain. What we do know is the whole point of this trap was to make the rebellion believe the station was already VERY vulnerable. They weren't expecting a fleet. They weren't expecting a functional Death Star. They were tricked into attacking the station.

All these points basically boil down to a simple answer of the targets they expected to face, weren't targetable from hyperspace and the ones that were, were either too sudden or expected to be too weak to justify the risk in testing.

Let just presume that everyone agrees with these statements so far (Which I know they wont, I can already sense the mile long book of nerd hate boners ready to pick this apart instead of being satisfied with a plausible answer based in canon lore, because Star Wars fans are the worst...) The question then becomes,


How did the Raddus manage to hit the Supremacy, and why was Hux worried once he realized Hondo's plan if hyperspace ramming wasn't a thing?

"Pre-hyperspace" speed up. Almost every time a ship jumps to hyperspace there's a moment where the ship is bending real space before it breaks into hyperspace. This is typically shown with starlines from the cockpit, and the ship zooming off very quickly before disappearing. As shown:





From the several appearances on screen, it's pretty clear to see that the starship travels some distance at "pre lightspeed" before being thrust into the alternate dimension of hyperspace. During this time, I believe the ships will still interact with other ships in realspace. This is how the Raddus hit the Supremacy. Both ships had such a large cross section, getting them to collide before reaching lightspeed was just a matter of calculating trajectory, and since the supremacy didn't change course when the Raddus turned around, it was basically a sitting duck. At that point is was just a calculation of mass times speed....


Okay okay okay, even if I believe that, Darth Sanguis, why wouldn't the rebels weaponize "pre lightspeed"?

We don't have many real answers here.

It could be they tried and just weren't effective. There's a lot to consider. Firstly let's consider the answers given in A-D above. They would have been building these weapons to fight ships the size of an ISD or smaller. While this is an easy target for an x-wing to target weaponizing prelightspeed to hit one could prove tricky. Sure, you could add hyperdives to torpedoes, it would increase their effective range for sure, but it may not necessarily do more damage, it would also increase the cost per device exponentially, as an actual nav computer would need installed, failsafes for misses installed, likely a combat droid to guide it, as well as the hyperdive itself. That's some expensive ordinance. One idea mentioned using asteroids. which could save some money but how effective would it be against fleets? Realistically, we don't know. An asteroid isn't built like a ship. They aren't designed. They just are. A chunk could break off. It also comes to mind that bringing them to battle could prove tricky. Would a large cargo vessel carry them and dump them off to be used? Would they jump in from hyperspace like a starship? Either way, you're looking at heavy costs in either piloting/gear for hyperspace travel outside of combat or a ship to load and unload them. Once they're on the battlefield, they're expensive shieldless targets. Even if they went off without a hitch, is there any guarantee they work? Sure an ISD was crippled by an asteroid in ESB, but we never really get a good idea of it's size. For all we know that ship could have been hit by 30 or 40 asteroids before it was done in. How massive are the rocks we're throwing at these ISDs? The bigger they are, the more expensive they are. The bigger they are the easier to hit. How expensive is each one going to be compared to it's effectiveness? Even if it's half the cost of an X-wing, it's only good against ships. What happens when the fighters swarm in first? How close would you have to get before using one? Red range? Blue? We also have to consider how tractor beams and interdiction fields can be use to slow and stop ships.

Here's what we know for sure. They didn't use "pre-lightspeed" as a weapon. Being a Star Wars fan means we may just have to sit here and wait for them to write in a reason why, and accept the possibility that we may never know.

Getting hung up on this seems just as silly as getting hung up on the original death star not just hyperspacing to the correct side of Yavin to blow up the base... or the Empire not simply destroying the Falcon once it was parked in Cloud City.

14 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

How did the Raddus manage to hit the Supremacy, and why was Hux worried once he realized Hondo's plan if hyperspace ramming wasn't a thing?

"Pre-hyperspace" speed up. Almost every time a ship jumps to hyperspace there's a moment where the ship is bending real space before it breaks into hyperspace. This is typically shown with starlines from the cockpit, and the ship zooming off very quickly before disappearing. As shown:





From the several appearances on screen, it's pretty clear to see that the starship travels some distance at "pre lightspeed" before being thrust into the alternate dimension of hyperspace.

In Rebels, that "speed up" was handled rather oddly - in Season 3's finale, Thrawn has active Interdictors - a frigate "jumps to hyperspace" with that apparent speed-away to "too far away to see" - then, it falls out of hyperspace again - exactly where the "speed-away" began.

Giving me the impression that it is, in fact, an illusion, created whenever a ship "transits into the other dimension that is hyperspace".

I appreciate all the effort and enthusiasm you put into that post DarthSanguis. But what this really boils down to in my opinion is it was a cheap way to wrap up a lazy setup and that both the setup and solution make rather a great big mess for anyone coming after.

The Death Star needing to orbit the planet doesn't make a mess. At Cloud City they weren't after Han and Leia. They wanted Luke. They deactivated the hyperdrive so the Falcon couldn't get away. They didn't need to blow it up. It was a backup plan if the capture of Skywalker went haywire. A lot of the "plot holes" that keep coming up for the OT are just people being snarky or cynical and patting themselves on the back for their cleverness.

I do respect your enthusiasm but this way out made a mess of their own movie. It was also setup quite cheaply and horribly for a character that caused one of her chief subordinates to turn to mutiny over being tight lipped for no good reason. On a certain level even setting aside the mess it makes for hyperspace, allowing them to break the rules, I'd argue that Sleepy Dinosaur Lady hadn't earned going out like that.

1 hour ago, Frimmel said:

If the writer's are free to just make the tech or The Force do whatever they need to do you end up with the plot driving the character's actions and not the character's actions driving the plot. It is a subtle but tremendously important distinction.

Nothing in ANH prepares you for the idea that Luke's gonna lift a spaceship with his brain, and nothing in ESB prepares you for the Emperor being able to shoot lightning. Which is itself a far stretch from Yoda and Dooku ping-ponging lightning around, and an even further stretch from Yoda flinging off the walls like a gravitationally-confused acrobat. And, then, queue complaints about Kylo reading minds and Rey's feats sans any training.

The rules have been constantly broken for 40 years.

6 minutes ago, svelok said:

Nothing in ANH prepares you for the idea that Luke's gonna lift a spaceship with his brain, and nothing in ESB prepares you for the Emperor being able to shoot lightning. Which is itself a far stretch from Yoda and Dooku ping-ponging lightning around, and an even further stretch from Yoda flinging off the walls like a gravitationally-confused acrobat. And, then, queue complaints about Kylo reading minds and Rey's feats sans any training.

The rules have been constantly broken for 40 years.

So now we have to have a semantic argument between the difference between "world building" and "breaking the rules of the built world?"

It's all fantasy guys and gals. Applying logic to it is futile, so sit back and enjoy the 'rule of cool' during the scene come into play.

I worry this thread has turned into a 'why not just take the eagles to Mordor' thread.

And in case your wondering I find this, and the bomber threads to be awesome.

12 minutes ago, Frimmel said:

I appreciate all the effort and enthusiasm you put into that post DarthSanguis. But what this really boils down to in my opinion is it was a cheap way to wrap up a lazy setup and that both the setup and solution make rather a great big mess for anyone coming after.

And that's where we disagree.

Honestly, if this is the line people are drawing in the sand then maybe it was about time someone brought it up. This is the issue that ruins the series for them, then maybe it's time. If people are too stiff and rigid to grow with the franchise, then may it's time they stop holding us back.

As far as I see it there are two types of people:

1.) those who can extrapolate from missing information

6 minutes ago, Noosh said:

'why not just take the eagles to Mordor' thread.

well? why not?

6 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

And that's where we disagree.

Honestly, if this is the line people are drawing in the sand then maybe it was about time someone brought it up. This is the issue that ruins the series for them, then maybe it's time. If people are too stiff and rigid to grow with the franchise, then may it's time they stop holding us back.

As far as I see it there are two types of people:

1.) those who can extrapolate from missing information

Saying their needs to be limits on what The Force can do and what the tech can do is holding the series back?

I missed Noosh's post. Great point on "just do whatever is cool." Suggesting writers can't do whatever the heck they want is not being stiff and rigid. It is called having standards and having standards is not a bad thing.

24 minutes ago, Frimmel said:

Saying their needs to be limits on what The Force can do and what the tech can do is holding the series back?

I missed Noosh's post. Great point on "just do whatever is cool." Suggesting writers can't do whatever the heck they want is not being stiff and rigid. It is called having standards and having standards is not a bad thing.

Yes!

It's a fiction. That's the whole point of a fiction. It's bends the rules and limits of our perspective. Why have a series about all powerful hermit wizard-monks vs Evil space nazis if you can't adjust the rules?

I hate to be a **** about it but guess what?

It's happened.

It's BEEN ESTABLISHED.



Is an accepted part of the movie canon.

You can either fill in the holes like the rest of the functioning fan base, who accept the stories aren't perfect and realize that while extremes happen they don't define how the universe typically works, or you can dig your heels in the dirt and yelp, "They CAN'T do that!" until you leave.

My post was designed to help gap that "THEY CAN'T DO THAT" disbelief, and maybe it's not what happened but it's more than enough to satisfy MOST people who understand that this scene obviously was not typical, even if they haven't explained why...

EXTRAPOLATE.

1 hour ago, Ironlord said:

In Rebels, that "speed up" was handled rather oddly - in Season 3's finale, Thrawn has active Interdictors - a frigate "jumps to hyperspace" with that apparent speed-away to "too far away to see" - then, it falls out of hyperspace again - exactly where the "speed-away" began.

Giving me the impression that it is, in fact, an illusion, created whenever a ship "transits into the other dimension that is hyperspace".

This is interesting, and could change the nature of my of argument. If this is the case, then some how, the Raddus and Supreamacy did manage to collide while one was in hyperspace. Perhaps the larger the object in hyperspace, the smaller the mass required to create mass shadows? The Raddus was pretty darn big, so was the Supremacy, that could make it interesting!

1 hour ago, Ginkapo said:

well? why not?

Now THIS I can do. I'm much better versed in Lord of the Rings lore than Star Wars lore. Do you want the answer? lol

And keep the jargon out of Star Wars! Mass shadows...pfft...I took physics once and don't ever want to take it again. It was horrible.

My only problem with the hyperspace thing is now it's exactly like the Eagles to Mordor thing. I also disagree with it looking cool, but that's me and I think it's established there's something wrong with me.