1 hour ago, LordBritish said:One might use it on a deathstar,
A Death Star will blow an incoming ship clean out of the sky with its gazillion turrets, never mind the super laser.
IGN: SW TLJ's 6 Biggest WTF questions (SPOILERS)
The turrets that couldn't even track star fighters? At near-lightspeed? I think you overestimate their chances.
47 minutes ago, Cifer said:The turrets that couldn't even track star fighters? At near-lightspeed? I think you overestimate their chances.
Fighters are tiny and nimble, unlike cruisers. TLJ's and the previous movies show that all the time.
And what is this about near-lightspeed? The Resistance cruiser wasn't moving very fast before jumping.
It was also at a range where the First Order's weapons were ineffective against its shields - that was the whole point of the chase. So the attack can start from outside effective turbolaser range and once started can't be intercepted before it hits. Yes, the superlaser (of the second death star, not the first) might be able to hit the ramming vessel, but it's also rather slow-firing. So instead of one freighter, you send ten. That's still a minuscule amount of ressources compared to the cost of a death star.
What we don't know is whether the attack could work over large (interstellar) ranges. Is it just the start of the hyperjump that has this ability or would plowing through a vessel midway through the travel or on arrival work as well? Han Solo's comment about flying into a star or bouncing too close to a super nova indicates that there are dangers while in travel - are these dangers only to the ship or to the objects hit as well?
Edited by Cifer
I kinda have to agree with the death star analogy; aside from it's primary function of coring planets, it doesn't strike me as capable of being capable of mass engaging crusiers; if anything it's one and only capital ship weapon was the death star beam, which seemed perfectly capable of wreaking ships in it's firing arc with ease. If 10 tried to do that however? I imagine it would only be able to blow up two at best before the rest plowed into it.
Conversely however; I think the death star is heavily armoured enough not to really care. One crusier would probably buckle the armour where it would hit but otherwise be ineffective; plus there's nothing to suggest Hyperdrive bombing would be accurate enough to "focus" an attack on a particular segment. Holdo hit a wing; having several cruisers smash into a death star in several different locations would deal significant damage that might warrant a few months or years of maintenance; but I feel it would not destroy the reinforced, planet sized battle station. I mean, a super star destroyer crashed into a incomplete death star and while that wasn't at hyperspace, there was nothing to suggest that it's crashing was any more of an inconvenience to the DS2 at that point.
The other thing is the sacrifice in ships and manpower would be immense; not to mention wholly unethical. Aiming to win by mass suicide (unless you want to give away your intentions by making a mass evacuation; which I might add would be highly exposed to tie fighters) is a victory only the empire would achieve. I can think of many reasons why this wouldn't be a standard tactic; that and it would effectively premote terrorism if it did became a commonly adopted EU stratigum, so kinda gotta be worried
Probably the same reason Akbar wasn't a main character to do this; just imagine what the press would be if the movie promoted a fish guy called Akbar who saved the resistance by suicidal attack! XD I can almost smell the political incorrectness already.
32 minutes ago, Cifer said:It was also at a range where the First Order's weapons were ineffective against its shields - that was the whole point of the chase. So the attack can start from outside effective turbolaser range and once started can't be intercepted before it hits.
No, Holdo turns the ship around and flies towards the target. She is in weapons range before the jump.
Hux has enough time to order his people to ignore her - meaning she could have been shot down if he had given the order. It's his arrogance and need to prove himself that allows her to come close enough and jump through his ship.
She basically repeats Poe's approach from the start of the movie, and Hux makes the same mistake again of underestimating a threat because he wants to look good for Snoke.
2 minutes ago, LordBritish said:Conversely however; I think the death star is heavily armoured enough not to really care. One crusier would probably buckle the armour where it would hit but otherwise be ineffective; plus there's nothing to suggest Hyperdrive bombing would be accurate enough to "focus" an attack on a particular segment. Holdo hit a wing; having several cruisers smash into a death star in several different locations would deal significant damage that might warrant a few months or years of maintenance; but I feel it would not destroy the reinforced, planet sized battle station. I mean, a super star destroyer crashed into a incomplete death star and while that wasn't at hyperspace , there was nothing to suggest that it's crashing was any more of an inconvenience to the DS2 at that point.
That's the difference. Again, a car hitting a building at 100 km/h is a problem for the building at worst. A car hitting a building at near-lightspeed is a problem for the city around it (for the very short amount of time that the city still exists).
As for the question of focus, we can actually calculate that: Holdo hit the Supremacy at all. While the ship is gargantuan when it comes to width and length, it's "only" 4km high. So her attack was accurate within 4km. The superlaser emitter of the death star seems to measure around 50km.
20 minutes ago, LordBritish said:The other thing is the sacrifice in ships and manpower would be immense; not to mention wholly unethical. Aiming to win by mass suicide (unless you want to give away your intentions by making a mass evacuation; which I might add would be highly exposed to tie fighters) is a victory only the empire would achieve. I can think of many reasons why this wouldn't be a standard tactic; that and it would effectively premote terrorism if it did became a commonly adopted EU stratigum, so kinda gotta be worried
Yeah, then we're back at the "why don't they automate stuff?" question that lies at the heart of most Science Fiction. We're already at the point in real life where drones are becoming stronger than humans when it comes to aerial combat due to not suffering from their limitations when it comes to g-forces and reaction times. Actual space combat really has no place for humans, though of course we want our plucky flyboy fiction. That said, if there's any task you can automate, it's certainly "jump to hyperspace towards coordinates X,Y,Z; shut down failsafes" - it`'s already established hyperjumps need a computer anyway. So in the end, we're not really talking about ships, but about over-large kinetic missiles, which have been accepted as a legitimate means of warfare since their invention.
28 minutes ago, LordBritish said:Probably the same reason Akbar wasn't a main character to do this; just imagine what the press would be if the movie promoted a fish guy called Akbar who saved the resistance by suicidal attack! XD I can almost smell the political incorrectness already.
Ouch. Good point indeed...
11 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:No, Holdo turns the ship around and flies towards the target. She is in weapons range before the jump.
Hux has enough time to order his people to ignore her - meaning she could have been shot down if he had given the order. It's his arrogance and need to prove himself that allows her to come close enough and jump through his ship.
She basically repeats Poe's approach from the start of the movie, and Hux makes the same mistake again of underestimating a threat because he wants to look good for Snoke.
She turns the ship around, but we don't know how long she actually flies before making her jump - it doesn't exactly seem far to me.
I mean it only takes moments for the Resistance support ships to get into blasting range once they run out of fuel.
13 minutes ago, Cifer said:A car hitting a building at near-lightspeed is a problem for the city around it (for the very short amount of time that the city still exists
Wait? What?
3 minutes ago, DanteRotterdam said:Wait? What?
Converting that much mass into energy gets you mushroom cloud kinds of results.
It's clearly not what happens in the movie, of course. That's a different matter. The city ship is still there after the impact, after all.
21 minutes ago, Cifer said:That's the difference. Again, a car hitting a building at 100 km/h is a problem for the building at worst. A car hitting a building at near-lightspeed is a problem for the city around it (for the very short amount of time that the city still exists).
As for the question of focus, we can actually calculate that: Holdo hit the Supremacy at all. While the ship is gargantuan when it comes to width and length, it's "only" 4km high. So her attack was accurate within 4km. The superlaser emitter of the death star seems to measure around 50km.
Yeah, then we're back at the "why don't they automate stuff?" question that lies at the heart of most Science Fiction. We're already at the point in real life where drones are becoming stronger than humans when it comes to aerial combat due to not suffering from their limitations when it comes to g-forces and reaction times. Actual space combat really has no place for humans, though of course we want our plucky flyboy fiction. That said, if there's any task you can automate, it's certainly "jump to hyperspace towards coordinates X,Y,Z; shut down failsafes" - it`'s already established hyperjumps need a computer anyway. So in the end, we're not really talking about ships, but about over-large kinetic missiles, which have been accepted as a legitimate means of warfare since their invention.
Ouch. Good point indeed...
She turns the ship around, but we don't know how long she actually flies before making her jump - it doesn't exactly seem far to me.
Indeed, my answer to your first question is that I prefer not to think about such things too heavily; as most si-fi authors, never mind movie directors don't tend to think too hard on the physics of such things. The plot requires the death star to be nearly indestructible to conventional attack, and so it is. Otherwise why didn't they simply batter the death star when the shields were down? They either wanted a fancy finish or alternatively perhaps in it's unfinished state it was still too heavily armoured for an direct attack to have much effect within the time frame they had. Simply because if it was as effective as true hyperspace suggests; everyone in Finn's section should have died instantly, but they didn't, which suggests that while the attack was devastating; it was much less devastating to the target then would otherwise be possible in conventional physics. The damage inflicted on Snoke's vessel was highly localised which suggests a similar result would be inflicted upon the death star. The true danger seemed to be the shrapnel produced afterwards that seemed to tear through perfectly healthy ships, that is worth exploring!
And why don't they automate stuff? No idea. But I get the impression that droids are largely un-trustable, especially after the clone wars. The other suggestion is that the alliance is much less cutting edge, I mean they are still fighting X-wings after 30 years, if anything I would suggest that the alliance simply regressed as soon as they ran out of use for their military; they chose not to exterminate the empire when they had the chance and they paid dearly for it by having their heart ripped out in the force awakens. Just either way the galaxy doesn't trust automation enough to fully automatise everything, which kinda harkin's back to Luca's original vision of a galaxy that is old; but new. Basically World War 2 in space.
For that same reason, I feel the resistance don't use gigantic kinetic missiles for a different reason; they don't really have the dedicated tech nor resources to turn crusiers into bombs; what they had at the start of the movie was literally everything they had. Their primary goal was survival and as such they lacked the resources to fight a protracted war with this method. Could the alliance in it's prime? Possibly. But I get the impression that after Endor at least; they were winning and no longer needed such desperate tactics and as evil as the empire was; I get the impression that the people running the ships then were by large more interested in self preservation then anything else.
9 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:Converting that much mass into energy gets you mushroom cloud kinds of results.
It's clearly not what happens in the movie, of course. That's a different matter. The city ship is still there after the impact, after all.
Isn’t that because hyper space isn’t.... well... real? So it is foolish to adhere amy properties to it based on the limited knowledge we possess of it.
21 minutes ago, DanteRotterdam said:Isn’t that because hyper space isn’t.... well... real? So it is foolish to adhere amy properties to it based on the limited knowledge we possess of it.
Only the first paragraph was about real world physics. But yes, it's impossible to say what "actually" happens with a hyperspace jump.
26 minutes ago, ExpandingUniverse said:
Eh. To quote the comment I just posted there:
"I think you took many of the movie's statements too much at face value. It's not bitter and broken Luke you're supposed to listen to, but the Luke who pulled himself together and overcame his depression for the sake of his friends. And yes, the codebreaker tries to pull up some moral relativism, about how there's no real good and evil - while he's sitting in a ship with people who would sacrifice themselves for their friends and shortly before he'll sell them out for a fortune and his own hide. That's not the guy you're supposed to take moral lessons from.
Plus, not everything that doesn't give the universe a "lived happily ever after" is meaningless. Luke blowing up the first death star saved the rebellion. Vader killing the Emperor and redeeming himself... is pretty close to meaningless considering Lando blew up the death star at the same time, but at least it saved Luke. Holdo sacrificing herself and the Raddus made sure the resistance had a chance to entrench themselves. Luke stalling Kylo both saved part of the resistance to get back onto the Falcon and thoroughly embarrassed new "Supreme Leader" Kylo in front of his troops. And so on - you don't save the galaxy with one action. But you just might contribute to it being saved."
15 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:Only the first paragraph was about real world physics. But yes, it's impossible to say what "actually" happens with a hyperspace jump.
Exactly. And that's always been a good way out - you're not really accelerating to light speed, there's some vague alternate dimension that we get to make the rules up for. And one of those implicit rules was: You can't weaponize it. Because weaponized FTL-drives are usually effective beyond anything the canon wants to acknowledge as a weapon. Now Holdo has shown that a hyperdrive can be weaponized and used to have one cruiser take out large parts of a fleet, including the largest ship ever shown in the series. And I don't think we want "Sacrifice one cruiser to take out a fleet" to be a viable strategy.
31 minutes ago, ExpandingUniverse said:
Wow...
”I like philosophy plus I like the old Sta Wars better than the current Star Wars. Now to combine the two I am going to make some horribly inaccurate statements to show why I am not really well versed in either.”
This might be the worst article I have read about this movie.
I take all with a pinch of salt.. there's one rant vid on Youtube which i think is hilarious
... and we all ranted about the OT Special Editions
To be fair I don’t rand about those and they provided many of my friends with thme possibility to finally see the trilogy in theaters. I like about one third of the addition/changes, am ambivalent about another third and think the other 33% was terrible or aged badly.
41 minutes ago, Cifer said:Now Holdo has shown that a hyperdrive can be weaponized and used to have one cruiser take out large parts of a fleet, including the largest ship ever shown in the series.
Does the destruction of the Death Star by a single torpedo mean all space stations can be taken out by a single torpedo at all times?
Not if by now two films have been spent explaining why that single torpedo was able to do just that.
Edited by Cifer6 minutes ago, Cifer said:Not if by now two films have been spent explaining why that single torpedo was able to do just that.
And TLJ explains - visually, and contextually - why a hyperspace kamikaze run is only useful in very limited, very specific circumstances.
Just now, Stan Fresh said:And TLJ explains - visually, and contextually - why a hyperspace kamikaze run is only useful in very limited, very specific circumstances.
Does it though? I mean, yes, the specific circumstance is obviously "you've got a cruiser to spare" - the point of victories that you can't afford was quite explicitly made in the movie. But other than that... I didn't see all that much. Particularly when it comes to forces that are slightly more evenly matched than "Three ships versus a fleet containing the largest ship ever seen" where you can't just argue that anything within attack range is toast anyway.
Just now, Cifer said:Does it though?
Yes.
Just now, Cifer said:I mean, yes, the specific circumstance is obviously "you've got a cruiser to spare"
It's much more than that. We've had like three threads about it. It's all there in the movie, and has been discussed thoroughly. I'm not going to repeat it here. Just read the threads.
19 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:Does the destruction of the Death Star by a single torpedo mean all space stations can be taken out bya single torpedo at all times?
C’mon now, Stan...don’t be silly. Of course all space stations can’t be taken out by a single torpedo.
There were TWO.
3 minutes ago, Nytwyng said:
C’mon now, Stan...don’t be silly. Of course all space stations can’t be taken out by a single torpedo.
There were TWO.
That's just what THEY want you to think.