1 hour ago, TheJrade said:

What I don't get is if you can use hyperspace as a weapon why don't people do it all the time? Why make a Death Star when an Imperial Shuttle at light speed will obliterate a planet just as well?

Aside from some of the other reasons brought up here and in the other thread - the precision required, the difference in mass between a Mon Calamari cruiser and an Imperial shuttle, etc. - the same reason that, after a brief flirtation with smoking, I decided that if I wanted a vice, I should just pump more money into my comics reading/collecting: once that cigarette is smoked, it’s gone...once I read a comic, I can read it again as many times as I like. Likewise, that Death Star (at least on paper) can be used over and over again, while the ship used as a hyper-battering ram can’t.

Because the purpose of the Death Star was not just to destroy stuff. It was a battle station built to cause fear and to dominate a galaxy.

I realy don’t see how people can have this issue. Did we stop making bombs and started depending on kamikaze pilots once that became a thing?

1 hour ago, DanteRotterdam said:

Because the purpose of the Death Star was not just to destroy stuff. It was a battle station built to cause fear and to dominate a galaxy.

I realy don’t see how people can have this issue. Did we stop making bombs and started depending on kamikaze pilots once that became a thing?

Notably, we did stop relying on kamikaze pilots when guided missiles became a thing.

2 hours ago, Nytwyng said:

Aside from some of the other reasons brought up here and in the other thread - the precision required, the difference in mass between a Mon Calamari cruiser and an Imperial shuttle, etc. - the same reason that, after a brief flirtation with smoking, I decided that if I wanted a vice, I should just pump more money into my comics reading/collecting: once that cigarette is smoked, it’s gone...once I read a comic, I can read it again as many times as I like. Likewise, that Death Star (at least on paper) can be used over and over again, while the ship used as a hyper-battering ram can’t.

A requirement of precision is not really relevant when you can just make a billion(s of) hyperspace guided missiles for the price of one Death Star. And any of them that do not hit their target can be reused. You don't need to use a million-ton cruiser when almost anything at lightspeed will destroy a planet, hence my use of an Imperial Shuttle as an example. Am I not understanding the argument you are making?

10 minutes ago, TheJrade said:

when almost anything at lightspeed will destroy a planet

No, not really. Snoke's battleship was really freaking huge - but compared to a planet, it's peanuts. So, a rather sizable capital ship slammed into Snokes ship at FTL, but look how much of it remained intact. They were able to have a dramatic fight in the hanger well after the impact. So no, blowing up a planet is going to take a MUCH greater mass than a tiny missile.

At that point, you might as well just drop a 16 mile asteroid on the planet. You'll get a much better return on your investment as far as planetary devastation goes.

13 minutes ago, TheJrade said:

A requirement of precision is not really relevant when you can just make a billion(s of) hyperspace guided missiles for the price of one Death Star. And any of them that do not hit their target can be reused. You don't need to use a million-ton cruiser when almost anything at lightspeed will destroy a planet, hence my use of an Imperial Shuttle as an example. Am I not understanding the argument you are making?

No, you’re not.

For starters, we’ve only seen one such collision, so there’s no indication that a shuttle will “destroy a planet.” From context of the one hyperspace collision we’ve seen, our first information about how hyperspace works (Han’s line in the original), and everything in between, it would appear that such collisions are far deadlier to vehicles than planets. (ETA: Desslok answered this part better than I did.)

Meanwhile the precision that I referred to was not precision in targeting but precision in execution—jump a split second early, and you just enter hyperspace as normal; a split second late, and you just impact the other object in real space.

11 minutes ago, Desslok said:

No, not really. Snoke's battleship was really freaking huge - but compared to a planet, it's peanuts. So, a rather sizable capital ship slammed into Snokes ship at FTL, but look how much of it remained intact. They were able to have a dramatic fight in the hanger well after the impact. So no, blowing up a planet is going to take a MUCH greater mass than a tiny missile.

At that point, you might as well just drop a 16 mile asteroid on the planet. You'll get a much better return on your investment as far as planetary devastation goes.

Interestingly, the smaller and lighter a target is the less it will be affected by an impact. Snoke's ship did not absorb as much of the impact as a planet would. Most of it went out the back like a bullet through paper might, although it is worthy of note that all the Star Destroyers in the fleet were also destroyed at the same time. In any case, the amount of damage caused was worth the 'investment' a thousand times over.

A tiny missile WOULD work fine. Multiply whatever mass you imagine for you planet-killing missile by the speed of light. Without boring you too bad with the physics behind inelastic impact computations, you really don't need much at all to do the job. ANd that is not even considering that hyperspace speeds are demonstrated to be many many times the speed of light, dramatically faster than even the Warp speeds of Star Trek.

That said, a big asteroid would be just fine as well.

17 minutes ago, Nytwyng said:

No, you’re not.

For starters, we’ve only seen one such collision, so there’s no indication that a shuttle will “destroy a planet.” From context of the one hyperspace collision we’ve seen, our first information about how hyperspace works (Han’s line in the original), and everything in between, it would appear that such collisions are far deadlier to vehicles than planets. (ETA: Desslok answered this part better than I did.)

Meanwhile the precision that I referred to was not precision in targeting but precision in execution—jump a split second early, and you just enter hyperspace as normal; a split second late, and you just impact the other object in real space.

Up until Ep8, the thought was that if you hit something while traveling in Hyperspace you evaporated and the something was unaffected. If this is the mythos then all the movies work out fine.

It is only with Ep8 that suddenly nothing makes sense. Even if you were to somehow imagine that Admiral Clownhair is somehow the most brilliant/lucky navigator in the history of space warfare that she was able to pull this off, if it were possible why would trillions of space-warfaring sentients not have tried to master this same feat over the course of history?

18 minutes ago, TheJrade said:

Up until Ep8, the thought was that if you hit something while traveling in Hyperspace you evaporated and the something was unaffected. If this is the mythos then all the movies work out fine.

It is only with Ep8 that suddenly nothing makes sense. Even if you were to somehow imagine that Admiral Clownhair is somehow the most brilliant/lucky navigator in the history of space warfare that she was able to pull this off, if it were possible why would trillions of space-warfaring sentients not have tried to master this same feat over the course of history?

Episode 8 changes nothing that we’ve seen on screen before regarding hyperspace. Unless we’ve missed something. In which case, you’ll have no trouble directing us to the scenes that it has altered.

Show us how you know that “ trillions of space-warfaring sentients” haven’t “tried to master this same feat over the course of history,” and found it to not be worthwhile. Why did it work for Holdo? The same reason dramatic moves like that work for a protagonist in any story.

Just now, Nytwyng said:

Episode 8 changes nothing that we’ve seen on screen before regarding hyperspace. Unless we’ve missed something. In which case, you’ll have no trouble directing us to the scenes that it has altered.

Show us how you know that “ trillions of space-warfaring sentients” haven’t “tried to master this same feat over the course of history,” and found it to not be worthwhile. Why did it work for Holdo? The same reason dramatic moves like that work for a protagonist in any story.

Ok, so the answer we are going for with this is basically, "a wizard did it" then?

32 minutes ago, TheJrade said:

if it were possible why would trillions of space-warfaring sentients not have tried to master this same feat over the course of history?

Because nobody was expecting it. To use a real world example - why, in the last 20-ish years, has nobody hijacked another plane and flown it into another important skyscraper? Because before 9.11, nobody considered it a likely avenue of attack and after 9.11 we restricted flight patterns, gave fighter jets standing orders to shoot down planes, we've locked and reinforced cockpit doors and so on. Same thing here - now there will be interdictor escorts, standing orders to immediately target ships up if they start to set up the attack, a screen of smaller ships to act as Meat Shields and so on.

32 minutes ago, TheJrade said:

In any case, the amount of damage caused was worth the 'investment' a thousand times over.

You consider the loss of 50% of the Command Staff and the very last capital ship the Rebellion has to take out a couple of Star Destroyers to be a worthy investment? I am never taking stock tips from you.

12 minutes ago, Desslok said:

To use a real world example - nobody was expecting it. Why in the last 20-ish years, has nobody hijacked another plane and flown it into another important target? Because before 9.11, nobody considered it a likely avenue of attack and after 9.11 we restricted flight patterns, gave fighter jets standing orders to shoot down jets, we've locked and reinforced cockpit doors and so on. Same thing here - now there will be interdictor escorts, standing orders to blow ships up if they set up the attack, a screen of smaller ships to act as Meat Shields and so on.

You consider the loss of the very last capital ship the Rebellion and 50% of the Command Staff to take out a couple of Star Destroyers to be a worthy investment? I am never taking stock tips from you.

9/11 was unexpected because flight has only been around for decades, and kamikazes have been around for almost as long. It was just unexpected because it was used on a civilian target. It hasn't happened since because preventing access to jetliners is comparatively simple. Hyperspace travel has been around for 10,000+ years and is accessible to almost everyone with a couple credits to rub together. Additionally, you can enter hyperspace from essentially anywhere and nothing can defend against it, unlike a plane you can simply shoot down. My point is if it were possible, why has no one done it before? Is Admiral Clownhair just the most brilliant military tactician ever, or is it just bad writing?

But if we are really going t go with "it was unexpected" as a reason, haven't we already made the laughably incompetent First Order not-scary enough?

Yes. One capital ship and an SJW caricature to destroy 10 capital ships and one super-capital ship is a good investment, particularly if they are seconds away from destruction anyways. I recommend blue chip manufacturing stocks and silver.

1 minute ago, TheJrade said:

Ok, so the answer we are going for with this is basically, "a wizard did it" then?

And I said this...where?

Please, by all means, show us what we’ve seen on screen that has been contradicted by this scene.

Then, show us where it’s established that the tactic had never been tried before, or hadn’t been proven to be more trouble than it’s worth.

Meanwhile, big dramatic chances that happen to work for the heroes just because they’re the heroes? Fiction is rife with them. Oh, who am I kidding...you’re right. That’s just silly. After all, a farm boy could never blow up a moon-sized space station with a lucky shot. A 9-year old could never pilot a starfighter into an enemy command ship and be lucky enough to destroy it by flipping random cockpit switches. A guy in armor can’t survive an unsurvivable energy blast that kills another guy in armor who’s further away from the blast. An edgy cop can’t topple a house on stilts using a beat-up and shot-up pick-up truck. Another cop can’t overcome his trauma over using his gun and demonstrate superb marksmanship when a terrorist believed dead is about to shoot someone. A totalitarian government would rather let two rebels live than allow them to commit suicide on live television. A non-aerodynamic small freighter can “glide in” to a landing with no power.

You didn’t care for the movie. That’s fair. To hold it to a higher narrative standard than any other movie because of that? Not as fair.

7 minutes ago, TheJrade said:

an SJW caricature to

Ah, and now the penny drops- that's why you hate the movie. You can just **** right off, clownshoe. Welcome to my block list.

On 03/01/2018 at 8:47 AM, 2P51 said:

Why would they need cover? They were kicking their asses. They'd blown up the bridge of the command ship.

Well, for one thing, they explicitly state it . Weren't you just arguing for important exposition to be clearly stated?

Secondly, Ren and two fighters had just blown the bridge on the command ship. His two wingmen were promptly destroyed, and Ren was on his own.

Just now, Desslok said:

Ah, and now the penny drops- that's why you hate the movie. You can just **** right off, clownshoe. Welcome to my block list.

Well if you can't find a factual objection to my question you should just say so. She IS a caricature, but that criticism is entirely separate from the bad writing that went into the scene in question.

3 minutes ago, Nytwyng said:

And I said this...where?

Please, by all means, show us what we’ve seen on screen that has been contradicted by this scene.

Then, show us where it’s established that the tactic had never been tried before, or hadn’t been proven to be more trouble than it’s worth.

Meanwhile, big dramatic chances that happen to work for the heroes just because they’re the heroes? Fiction is rife with them. Oh, who am I kidding...you’re right. That’s just silly. After all, a farm boy could never blow up a moon-sized space station with a lucky shot. A 9-year old could never pilot a starfighter into an enemy command ship and be lucky enough to destroy it by flipping random cockpit switches. A guy in armor can’t survive an unsurvivable energy blast that kills another guy in armor who’s further away from the blast. An edgy cop can’t topple a house on stilts using a beat-up and shot-up pick-up truck. Another cop can’t overcome his trauma over using his gun and demonstrate superb marksmanship when a terrorist believed dead is about to shoot someone. A totalitarian government would rather let two rebels live than allow them to commit suicide on live television. A non-aerodynamic small freighter can “glide in” to a landing with no power.

You didn’t care for the movie. That’s fair. To hold it to a higher narrative standard than any other movie because of that? Not as fair.

Saying that this is a unique event in the history of the Star Wars galaxy is akin to saying a wizard did it and one doesn't need to explain it. That is just about the only defense fr this that works. The examples you cite are simply unlikely. And as for something that contradicts what we've seen on screen, well, the fact that planets are still around when any yahoo with a freighter and a cause evidently has the means to destroy any of them would seem to be enough, no?

The only reason the resistance used bombers was because the director decided he wanted WW2 style bombers in his movie, there is no logical reason behind it.

You just summed up Star Wars movies.

It's why:

All space combat takes place within visual range

Starfighters manouvre by banking and arcing like an atmospheric fighter, ignoring Newtonian physics.

The cockpit and gun turrets on the Millennium Falcon are based on those of a B-17 bomber.

The Death Star trench run was an almost frame-by-frame homage to The Dam Busters

Soldiers defending a base against walkers and possible orbital attack were in trenches.

And most of the rest, really.

19 minutes ago, Daronil said:

Well, for one thing, they explicitly state it . Weren't you just arguing for important exposition to be clearly stated?

Secondly, Ren and two fighters had just blown the bridge on the command ship. His two wingmen were promptly destroyed, and Ren was on his own.

One Star Destroyer has a hundred-odd small attack craft of various kinds, and there were half a dozen in Snope's fleet not to mention his flagship that might have had 20 times as many by size comparison. We are supposed to believe the First Order is suddenly concerned about losing two of them?

Or maybe it was bad writing.

21 minutes ago, Daronil said:

You just summed up Star Wars movies.

It's why:

All space combat takes place within visual range

Starfighters manouvre by banking and arcing like an atmospheric fighter, ignoring Newtonian physics.

The cockpit and gun turrets on the Millennium Falcon are based on those of a B-17 bomber.

The Death Star trench run was an almost frame-by-frame homage to The Dam Busters

Soldiers defending a base against walkers and possible orbital attack were in trenches.

And most of the rest, really.

This, I don't have a problem with. Dropping (firing downward) bombs in space is neither crazily unlikely nor does it break the suspension of disbelief necessary for literally every other space battle in the series like weaponized hyperspace does. And other than the fact that the battle on Crait fairly boring and ridiculously bad tactics (charge straight at enemy heavy armor with air support in flying Yugos) there isn't anything TOO terrible at being in trenches. Any cover is good cover.

34 minutes ago, Daronil said:

Well, for one thing, they explicitly state it . Weren't you just arguing for important exposition to be clearly stated?

Secondly, Ren and two fighters had just blown the bridge on the command ship. His two wingmen were promptly destroyed, and Ren was on his own.

The story is one great big wtf is everyone doing? Why are we jumping to no where? If we have the galaxy why aren't we putting ships in front of the enemy to stop them? If we can't catch them, why the **** are we following them? We apparently don't dare attack with our fighters. Why are we breaking off attacks? Can't cover from who? Ship's whose screens we can't apparently penetrate with our weapons so we're providing no cover, or resistance fighters that aren't there because we blew up the launch bay. Why would Hux care? He hates Kylo.

24 minutes ago, TheJrade said:

Saying that this is a unique event in the history of the Star Wars galaxy is akin to saying a wizard did it and one doesn't need to explain it. That is just about the only defense fr this that works.

...for you.

While you accept every other “unique event in the history of the Star Wars galaxy” without question.

But no other explanation will work for you on this matter, because you didn’t care for the movie, and thus have chosen to be unwilling to accept any explanation.

27 minutes ago, TheJrade said:

The examples you cite are simply unlikely.

No more or less so than Holdo’s last-ditch effort succeeding.

29 minutes ago, TheJrade said:

And as for something that contradicts what we've seen on screen, well, the fact that planets are still around when any yahoo with a freighter and a cause evidently has the means to destroy any of them would seem to be enough, no?

Hardly. Where, exactly, have they established on screen that “ any yahoo with a freighter and a cause evidently has the means to destroy planets.”

(Oh, don’t worry. I know you’re going to claim that the scene we’re discussing did that, when it did nothing of the kind.)

8 minutes ago, TheJrade said:

This, I don't have a problem with. Dropping (firing downward) bombs in space is neither crazily unlikely nor does it break the suspension of disbelief necessary for literally every other space battle in the series like weaponized hyperspace does.

Wait a second....

You can accept the technological parallels to World War II.

You can accept a (sentient?) energy field that people can manipulate to magically move objects and influence others’ minds.

I presume you can accept the notion that moon-sized battle stations exploding over habitable (and inhabited) moons wouldn’t cause a nuclear winter.

But, the notion that impeccable timing and luck allowing two objects to violate the laws of physics and occupy the same place at the same time just might result in Very Bad Things happening to those objects is your deal breaker?

1 minute ago, Nytwyng said:

...for you.

While you accept every other “unique event in the history of the Star Wars galaxy” without question.

But no other explanation will work for you on this matter, because you didn’t care for the movie, and thus have chosen to be unwilling to accept any explanation.

No more or less so than Holdo’s last-ditch effort succeeding.

Hardly. Where, exactly, have they established on screen that “ any yahoo with a freighter and a cause evidently has the means to destroy planets.”

(Oh, don’t worry. I know you’re going to claim that the scene we’re discussing did that, when it did nothing of the kind.)

What are some other 'unique' events that I accept? Blowing up the first Death Star had a whole (very good) movie's worth of explanation for a lucky shot combined with a deliberate design flaw. A kid blowing up a fuel/ammo magazine from inside a capital ship IS unlikely, and I am not the only one to have looked askance at it, but that is The Chosen One for you. Having Force sensitivity make one lucky is pretty well-established. And again, it could very well all be ascribed to luck. Throughout the series we see characters getting lucky shots or hitting weak points so it is not that crazy an idea. There are plenty of real-world examples of it as well, the SMS Bismarck's lucky shot on the HMS Hood is a comparatively well-known one, or at least easy to google.

On the other hand, this is the only example of hyperspace being used as a weapon. Making it Deus Ex Machina and bad writing.

To explain further: Any yahoo with a freighter has access to hyperspace, and an impact at lightspeed with an object of almost any mass is enough to destroy a planet.

We can go round and round about this all day, but what you need to do is explain why no one has done this before.

51 minutes ago, Desslok said:

Ah, and now the penny drops- that's why you hate the movie. You can just **** right off, clownshoe. Welcome to my block list.

Oh hey, the alt-right is here. Great. Prepare for long, hateful rants about how women and people of color are destroying society.

5 hours ago, TheJrade said:

The caveat that ships in Star Wars have a 'maximum speed' is sort of part and parcel of it being a 'space opera' rather than a 'science fiction' like, say, Star Trek. I am over that part. As long as it is coherent within the narrative I am ok with it.

What I don't get is if you can use hyperspace as a weapon why don't people do it all the time? Why make a Death Star when an Imperial Shuttle at light speed will obliterate a planet just as well?

It has been suggested before in legends and iirc in current canon as well that the death star was a weapon to keep the core worlds with their massively powerful planetary shields in line. Shields supposed to be magnitudes stronger than even gigantomania Supremanany defenses. Which did not evaporate either from the hyperspace attack of a giant over 3km long "hyperspace missile".

Which means that an imperial shuttle at light speed will not obliterate a planet with shields just fine. Meanwhile there are canon examples how a cruiser can even accidently obliterate a planet indeed with his hyperspace engine. But that does not cover the problem with the Death Star exist to solve, which would be planetary shields. Obliterating a whole planet within a day (or maybe in new canon a little more) can be done already by orbital bombardment by basically ANY star destroyer. You don't need to waste perfectly fine 100,000 credits for that when a little bit of tibanna gas for the turbolasers will do the job AND keeps system free of lethal hypermatter radiation on top. Furthermore, you need most likely something bigger … something which has enough firepower to do the job with orbital bombardment already just fine. So saving a 100,000,000 credits star destroyer and instead just waste the planet in a conventional DBZ operation seems the better solution.

4 minutes ago, Nytwyng said:

Wait a second....

You can accept the technological parallels to World War II.

You can accept a (sentient?) energy field that people can manipulate to magically move objects and influence others’ minds.

I presume you can accept the notion that moon-sized battle stations exploding over habitable (and inhabited) moons wouldn’t cause a nuclear winter.

But, the notion that impeccable timing and luck allowing two objects to violate the laws of physics and occupy the same place at the same time just might result in Very Bad Things happening to those objects is your deal breaker?

Not at all what I am saying. I absolutely know that a lightspeed impact is a Very Bad Thing. But not having narrative prevention for VBTs like this from happening, as any student of sci-fi writing will tell you is necessary, ruins any other sort of narrative construct. Most notably Death Stars.

If a writer wants to make up a flavor of magic and tell me it can do wacky things that is fine. I don't know how magic works so as long as they are consistent there is no issue. On the other hand, I DO know how warfare works and if they write bad Deus Ex Machina nonsense I feel quite justified in calling them on it. Particularly if the change negates 40 years of cinematic history.

5 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

Oh hey, the alt-right is here. Great. Prepare for long, hateful rants about how women and people of color are destroying society.

Let me know when they show up, because all I have seen is the Alt-Left pretending that legitimate objections to bad writing are somehow racist.