I've come over from the Armada thread where there is quite the discussion raging and I didn't see anything here surprisingly. So, how many game masters have had their players come back from watching the travesty that was The Last Jedi with the bright idea to auto-win space battles by using the sweet new tactic of hyperspacing crappy inexpensive ships into star destroyers and the like? Once again decent story sacrificed for some pretty pew-pew CGI explosions. Disney strikes again!

Some discussion here :

Yeah, check the big thread.

Short answer, it's super duper hard to get that result and Holdo as an NPC was able just have the GM handwave it if you really wanted to ensure that result.

Players would need to roll a stupid hard difficulty and generate multiple triumphs. Don't nail it and you either hit the button too late and just ram (see Rogue One) or too hit it too early and enter hyperspace before colliding.

Since the Raddus was so big even just a boosted ram would have been pretty effective. Holdo, if she did roll, just happened to nail it.

But making it an actual tactic isn't viable outside of near laboratory conditions. At that point there's other, more reliable, methods.

OK, great. Thanks for the link.

27 minutes ago, kenngp said:

So, how many game masters have had their players come back from watching the travesty that was The Last Jedi....

Not me.

I've had players come back from watching The Last Jedi, but no "travesty."

Yes, using a vessel to hyperspace ram a star destroyer can take it down. Yes, that's something very destructive and can be used to wreck anyones day...

BUT! And, this is the important part: It's ultimately costly and is, at best, going to be a phyrric victory in the long run.

Let's consider the logistics: A cruiser like the one in the Last Jedi is not cheap. It's an expensive piece of equipment that is used to transport mass amounts of troopers and smaller, transport shuttles. These are ships the alliance could very well use to transports individuals or equipment, act as a stationary base or even carry something important. If the alliance is wasting all of their ships as make-shift torpedoes, then eventually they are going to wasting valuable resources just pulling this tactic off repeatedly. Furthermore, you will need to have someone (Droid or otherwise) in the cockpit to make the jump. I don't see many people wanting to "Valiantly sacrifice" themselves to basically perform a suicide attack, and there are only so many droids around.

These are ships that the Rebellion could be using, that could be housing countless crew-members and while they may have shuttles to escape on they are going to be cramped and probably lacking hyperdrives themselves. In the event they don't? Well congrats, you've still just sacrificed Rebellion resources that could very well have been better used elsewhere. "Do you think ships just grow on trees!? We WERE going to use that transport to evacuate the citizens of an outer rim world under siege by the empire, but now because of you they are probably going to die!"

Before the point comes up about junk-yards, consider two things: 1) Ships that are likely stripped of anything worthwhile to sell second hand. Meaning repairs need to be made. And 2) They were in a junk yard, those ships are there for a reason. Ship-yards as well are going to end up being guarded, and if the empire catches wind of that tactic you can bet they are going to lock down those shipyards to stop people stealing from it to use as makeshift torpedoes.

Ultimately, this tactic is one that will cost MORE time, Lives, effort and resources to the point that ships and cruisers are going to get exhausted. And at that point? The empire will probably come in and crush you. After all, they're the ones with the credits to spend. They can wait you out as you slowly wittle away at your own fleet, sacrificing your ships over and over again until all that's left are little freighters and starfighters. At that point they bring in the star destroyers.

Still, it's a shame this tactic could work well if there was unlimited cruisers lying around. I mean, it's not like there are any counters to hyperspace travel or anything that can tear a ship out of hyperspace- OH WAIT!

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Interdictor-class_Star_Destroyer

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Gravity_well_projector

Alright, sorry if I got a bit over-zealous with the above but...what I'm trying to say is, this tactic isn't full-proof. There are ways around it, to counter it and above all it's a drain on resources for anyone.

Hyperspace Ramming isn't viable in the long run, and if the players keep trying it? Introduce them to the Interdictors.

On 1/1/2018 at 7:00 AM, kenngp said:

the travesty that was The Last Jedi

I hate to be that guy, but you misspelled "Freakin' Awesome" in that sentence.

11 hours ago, ExileofEnya said:

Yes, using a vessel to hyperspace ram a star destroyer can take it down. Yes, that's something very destructive and can be used to wreck anyones day...

BUT! And, this is the important part: It's ultimately costly and is, at best, going to be a phyrric victory in the long run.

Let's consider the logistics: A cruiser like the one in the Last Jedi is not cheap. It's an expensive piece of equipment that is used to transport mass amounts of troopers and smaller, transport shuttles. These are ships the alliance could very well use to transports individuals or equipment, act as a stationary base or even carry something important. If the alliance is wasting all of their ships as make-shift torpedoes, then eventually they are going to wasting valuable resources just pulling this tactic off repeatedly. Furthermore, you will need to have someone (Droid or otherwise) in the cockpit to make the jump. I don't see many people wanting to "Valiantly sacrifice" themselves to basically perform a suicide attack, and there are only so many droids around.

These are ships that the Rebellion could be using, that could be housing countless crew-members and while they may have shuttles to escape on they are going to be cramped and probably lacking hyperdrives themselves. In the event they don't? Well congrats, you've still just sacrificed Rebellion resources that could very well have been better used elsewhere. "Do you think ships just grow on trees!? We WERE going to use that transport to evacuate the citizens of an outer rim world under siege by the empire, but now because of you they are probably going to die!"

Before the point comes up about junk-yards, consider two things: 1) Ships that are likely stripped of anything worthwhile to sell second hand. Meaning repairs need to be made. And 2) They were in a junk yard, those ships are there for a reason. Ship-yards as well are going to end up being guarded, and if the empire catches wind of that tactic you can bet they are going to lock down those shipyards to stop people stealing from it to use as makeshift torpedoes.

Ultimately, this tactic is one that will cost MORE time, Lives, effort and resources to the point that ships and cruisers are going to get exhausted. And at that point? The empire will probably come in and crush you. After all, they're the ones with the credits to spend. They can wait you out as you slowly wittle away at your own fleet, sacrificing your ships over and over again until all that's left are little freighters and starfighters. At that point they bring in the star destroyers.

Still, it's a shame this tactic could work well if there was unlimited cruisers lying around. I mean, it's not like there are any counters to hyperspace travel or anything that can tear a ship out of hyperspace- OH WAIT!

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Interdictor-class_Star_Destroyer

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Gravity_well_projector

Alright, sorry if I got a bit over-zealous with the above but...what I'm trying to say is, this tactic isn't full-proof. There are ways around it, to counter it and above all it's a drain on resources for anyone.

Hyperspace Ramming isn't viable in the long run, and if the players keep trying it? Introduce them to the Interdictors.

The Alliance may waste some resources to the tune of a ship that cost MAYBE a couple hundred thousand credits to take out multiple Imperial ships that cost millions of not tens of millions or hundreds of millions of credits. Not a difficult choice for any military to make. As for there only being so many droids around, they can be made from scratch or reprogrammed with little to no effort for a couple characters with a moderate amount of experience in the game. And if the movies have shown us anything, it's that both ships and droids are very prevalent.

Your point of ship yards being well guarded and junk yards or mothballed military tech doesn't really hold water in my opinion considering how much of the rebellion's resources come from those two sources. You're right of course that any superpower would carefully guard those types of things(when is the last time an aircraft carrier or battleship went missing from the US Navy). However, we're talking about star wars where the Emipre lets those things go missing or get stolen regularly and allows their incompetence to fully equip rebel fleets on a regular basis. Ultimately an Imperial lockdown is no more than an opportunity for our plucky heroes to steal even more stuff than they would normally.

Ultimately, this tactic would cost no lives. Rebel ones anyway. Droids aim a silouette 5 or 6 old bulk cruiser at an Imperial fleet press the hyperspace button and blam! No more Imperial fleet. Or, gather the rebel fleet and attack Scarif or Endor, or wherever and every time you loose a ship, hundreds or thousands die.

Regarding Interdictors, I can't say as I've seen one in any of the movies and VERY infrequent in the new canon. The empire certainly doesn't deploy them with any serious regularity and even if they do, canon has shown us that they can be taken down by a few mandalorians wearing spacesuits with personal scale blaster pistols and rifles, so again, not a terribly significant issue.

At the end of the day, I would just love for Disney to try to tell a story that is in line with the lore and feel of star wars instead of flashy pew-pew explosions. But that is precisely why I love the games like Armada and Legions as well as the RPGs because I can tell a story there that does exactly that.

5 hours ago, kenngp said:

Not a difficult choice for any military to make.

You do realized that the Alliance just lost 50% of it's remaining command staff and it's very last capital ship doing that. That's a pretty terrible tradeoff to take out a tiny handful of Star Destroyers.

8 hours ago, kenngp said:

The Alliance may waste some resources to the tune of a ship that cost MAYBE a couple hundred thousand credits to take out multiple Imperial ships that cost millions of not tens of millions or hundreds of millions of credits. Not a difficult choice for any military to make. As for there only being so many droids around, they can be made from scratch or reprogrammed with little to no effort for a couple characters with a moderate amount of experience in the game. And if the movies have shown us anything, it's that both ships and droids are very prevalent.

Your point of ship yards being well guarded and junk yards or mothballed military tech doesn't really hold water in my opinion considering how much of the rebellion's resources come from those two sources. You're right of course that any superpower would carefully guard those types of things(when is the last time an aircraft carrier or battleship went missing from the US Navy). However, we're talking about star wars where the Emipre lets those things go missing or get stolen regularly and allows their incompetence to fully equip rebel fleets on a regular basis. Ultimately an Imperial lockdown is no more than an opportunity for our plucky heroes to steal even more stuff than they would normally.

Ultimately, this tactic would cost no lives. Rebel ones anyway. Droids aim a silouette 5 or 6 old bulk cruiser at an Imperial fleet press the hyperspace button and blam! No more Imperial fleet. Or, gather the rebel fleet and attack Scarif or Endor, or wherever and every time you loose a ship, hundreds or thousands die.

Regarding Interdictors, I can't say as I've seen one in any of the movies and VERY infrequent in the new canon. The empire certainly doesn't deploy them with any serious regularity and even if they do, canon has shown us that they can be taken down by a few mandalorians wearing spacesuits with personal scale blaster pistols and rifles, so again, not a terribly significant issue.

At the end of the day, I would just love for Disney to try to tell a story that is in line with the lore and feel of star wars instead of flashy pew-pew explosions. But that is precisely why I love the games like Armada and Legions as well as the RPGs because I can tell a story there that does exactly that.

I will concede I did mess up somewhat on the Junkyard point, I forgot that was one of the main ways the rebels did get ships (It's been a long week).

But if anything it only changes the point to something else: The Rebel Alliance/Resistance isn't made of credits like the empire, I doubt they can just bulk buy a bunch of Cruisers to play Starship Rocket Tag with the Empire. If they could? Why weren't their fleets at Endor and Scarif not only bigger but made up of far more advanced vessels? Credits don't just grow on trees, and even if credits are no problem: How are you going to make sure the empire doesn't trace it back to you. If you're a known rebel, the ISB likely would have frozen your assets save what you could grab or store in less-legal accounts. If you aren't known? You are likely aiming to keep it that way, meaning less-than-legal channels are being used and no doubt needing to pay off a few people to ensure that you can GET those ships without arousing suspicion.

Again, getting a Cruiser from a junk yard IS going to need some repair time. If it was fully operational and fine, it wouldn't be in a junkyard and has probably been stripped of all the good stuff that still works to sell off by any junkyard owner worth their salt (Unless the ship has been only very recently thrown to the scrap, in which case some leeway is allowed on that front). So yeah, it's going to cost to replace lost parts and repair. Plus, given the size of most cruisers that tune up isn't going to just take half an hour. And then there's the refuelling costs too, and refuelling it: You don't think they just left a discarded ship full of fuel do you? Because that is a safety hazard.

Stealing from a shipyard is still going to cost. You need to build up an away team, draw up plans, prepare for casualties and possible injured personnel that need to be healed. Add to that, the inevitable high-speed escape will no doubt lead to either some ships needing some repairs or even some ships being lost. And that's IF the heist is successful, if it fails you've just lost personnel that could have been put to use on another more viable mission. Either way, it's going to cost. If not credits, than lives and time. Not everyone has plot armour, or are we forgetting about Rogue one?

On to the point about droids. Getting cheap droids is relatively easy, I will concede but...here we run into another problem: You're relying on Droids.

Sure, Droids aren't horrible but they have a substantial margin of error more-so then people. You aren't just sending one droid off in a cruiser to wreak havoc, you'll need enough droids to fulfil all the roles on the bridge if you want to get that ship out of the system and even into ramming range. There's no solid number for that as all cruisers require different amounts, but for just the bridge alone you're looking at about six minimum. Alright, that's the bridge to fly it. Now you just have to make sure one of them doesn't malfunction, miscalculate the jump or decide to suddenly go rogue (Hope you got restraining bolts for all of those droids). Droids are only as good as their programming, and sometimes that programming may not be enough to see your makeshift torpedo out of the system. Adding to this we are assuming nothing goes wrong with the ship itself, the proper co-ordinates have been set to reach the system WITH the fleet (If you think you can just easily RAM into a fleet from outside of the system, hoo boy...that's a whole other calculations nightmare I'm not gonna get into. But short version, they are enemy ships a system over and they are probably moving). So yeah, the Droids themselves are also going to cost if not for repairs then also for obtaining them or programming and building them. Even stealing droids is going to require some reprogramming (and restraining bolts, don't forget those!). Finally, there's the hope nothing goes wrong with the ship itself during the jump to lightspeed. And since we only have a bridge crew, if something big goes wrong on a Cruiser that's going to take time to repair and that's if you have at-least one droid on there capable of doing the repairs for aforementioned cruiser.

Now we also have to account for other fun things like Purrgil, Mynocks, Space Pirates and other good hyperspace traffic. I don't think I need to explain that those are things that can happen during any jump.

As for why not use this tactic at Endor or Scarif? For Scarif, it's the fact that the planet is now a factor. Any missed trajectory can ram the ship into the planet, and don't think a cruiser is the Millenium Falcon that can just right itself right out of hyperspace into a planet. Add to this there was a force down there with sensitive information the Alliance needed, nobodies going to risk destroying that (Planet crashing is still going to cause ALOT of damage). There's a reason nobody goes hyperspace while still on a planet (Aside from astrogation reasons of-course). Endor had Sidious and Vader to contend with, but even with that the Death Star is big. Big enough to be considered a moon. One ship flying into that, even the second death star? Wouldn't be enough to destroy it. It would be damaging, but not enough to destroy it. Endor also has the aforementioned planet factor but, well, in this case that MIGHT prove advantageous if they landed it right and hit the shield generator.

One other thing to consider. The Raddus (Ship used in said Hyperspace Ram) was a Heavy Cruiser (a MC85 Star Cruiser to be exact). That thing I bet was more expensive then just a couple of hundred thousand credits as that was NOT a small vessel given it's cargo. For reference, the Raddus was 3,438.37 M in length (or 11,280.74 ft) while width wise it is 706.55 meters (or 2,318.08 ft). Resurgent Class Star Destroyers Length wise is 2,915.81 M (or 9566.30 ft). The Raddus is actually BIGGER then the Resurgent-class star destroyers (Not sure width wise, but even still I'm willing to bet yes given the difference in width)

Add in Something THAT size going at that high speeds at that range? Gonna cause some serious damage. The reason it wiped out so many ships was due to the Raddus' size, the placement of the Destroyers and the close proximity of the Raddus when it actually did it's hyperdrive jump.

As for Interdictors blowing up, only reason I think that whole tactic worked was because they were on the hull of the ship itself and thus managed to bypass the deflector shields. That and, well, the plot demanded it.

The empire may have incompetent individuals going by Rebels logic, but even they aren't brain-dead (The empire aren't staffed by B1 Battle droids, give them some credit). An enemy starts using a tactic too much, you can bet they are going to notice it, account for it and start making plans to counter it. Whether that's more interdictors or something else, that's up to the GM.

The empire is bigger than the Rebels, they have more resources, more star systems and more infrastructure to pull from. So the rebels wipe out a few system fleets, maybe a ship-yard? Big whoop. They have reserves.

The galaxy is a living one and it sure as heck ain't static. Things change, and members of the rebellion deciding to waste Capital ships and Cruisers on make-shift torpedo's is something that WILL be noticed.

2 hours ago, Desslok said:

You do realized that the Alliance just lost 50% of it's remaining command staff and it's very last capital ship doing that. That's a pretty terrible tradeoff to take out a tiny handful of Star Destroyers.

Yeah, it was a desperation move. Not something any general would willingly choose to do constantly for the aforementioned Starship Rocket tag.

...And now I have the image of the Empire and Rebels just Hyperspacing Starships into each-other, and it is hilarious.

8 hours ago, ExileofEnya said:

Sure, Droids aren't horrible but they have a substantial margin of error more-so then people. You aren't just sending one droid off in a cruiser to wreak havoc, you'll need enough droids to fulfil all the roles on the bridge if you want to get that ship out of the system and even into ramming range. There's no solid number for that as all cruisers require different amounts, but for just the bridge alone you're looking at about six minimum.

TLJ indicates that the unplanned jump can be performed by one person. The rest of the crew can evacuate beforehand.

Also, there's one large problem: For the tactic to be used, it doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be better than the alternatives. When your objective actually is to take out an imperial fleet, it won't get cheaper than losing a cruiser, whether you ram it into the ships or whether it dies to turbolaser fire in regular combat. Now, for the Resistance of TLJ, this is of course an attack of absolute desperation - one of the main lessons of the movie is that a victory you cannot afford is not a victory at all. But a group with more ressources can very much afford these kinds of attacks, especially since it's dubious whether a cruiser is needed after all: One cruiser destroyed the largest ship known to the Star Wars universe plus the fleet surrounding it. Scaled down, how much could a simple freighter destroy? A star destroyer or two?

Just out of curiosity, where is everyone getting the idea that this tactic was all that effective. There is no clear evidence in the movie that any ship other than the Supremacy was affected at all (other than having some really bright light shed on it at the moment of impact). We don't see any of the other Star Destroyers explode or broken in half and the Supremacy itself wasn't destroyed out right. It looks like over half of it may be salvageable and that the majority of crew likely survived. The section in the middle, where I assume Snoke's throne room was, didn't even lose atmosphere or artificial gravity.

It didn't appear to cause the kind of explosion one would expect of any object at relativistic speeds hitting another object (which would have vaporized everything nearby). It just seemed to destroy everything in the path of the cruiser. Which if you think of it that way means that it doesn't break our games at all.

That means it doesn't function as an alternative to the Death Star Laser because no planet ending explosion would result. It isn't a fleet killer maneuver, cause the fleet isn't going to line up to get taken out. And it becomes a massive waste or resources to destroy one of your own ships to wound an enemy vessel (though admittedly crippling it in the short term).

I've seeen TLJ three times and I'm seeing it again tomorrow, so I'll look again, but I haven't noticed any ship other than the Supremacy actually being affected by the impact. I'll pay specific attention to that tomorrow.

Why are people still ignoring the fact that Hux blithely ignored the oncoming ship or it would most likely be space dust prior to its ramming operation.

I will give you the First Order are morons flying in tight formation though.

45 minutes ago, HorusArisen said:

Why are people still ignoring the fact that Hux blithely ignored the oncoming ship or it would most likely be space dust prior to its ramming operation.

Wait - no they didnt. At the beginning they were assuming it was running away - and then Hux figured out what Admiral Redshirt was planning. Once he did, they did try to shoot it down. It was just too little too late by that point.

50 minutes ago, FinarinPanjoro said:

Just out of curiosity, where is everyone getting the idea that this tactic was all that effective. There is no clear evidence in the movie that any ship other than the Supremacy was affected at all (other than having some really bright light shed on it at the moment of impact). We don't see any of the other Star Destroyers explode or broken in half and the Supremacy itself wasn't destroyed out right. It looks like over half of it may be salvageable and that the majority of crew likely survived. The section in the middle, where I assume Snoke's throne room was, didn't even lose atmosphere or artificial gravity.

I may be misremembering, but it seemed to me the bright light implicated the damage - and that spread to several ships. And the Supremacy seems more like salvage than salvageable. That Snoke's throne room survived... well, you're a megalomaniac dictator - what's the place you order most heavily armored, shielded and redundantly powered on that personal measurement compensator you call a flagship? If anything of that ship survived, it would be that room. And the rest seemed in the process of tearing itself apart when Finn and Rose left.

58 minutes ago, HorusArisen said:

Why are people still ignoring the fact that Hux blithely ignored the oncoming ship or it would most likely be space dust prior to its ramming operation.

The jump didn't happen at a smaller distance than Star Wars space combat usually takes place at. If you don't say that all space combat is resolved instantly once enemies move into range, that's not really a problem. Not perfect, just better than.

1 hour ago, HorusArisen said:

I will give you the First Order are morons flying in tight formation though.

I guess they saw how well it worked out for the Resistance's bombers and wanted to show them how pros do it.

19 hours ago, Desslok said:

You do realized that the Alliance just lost 50% of it's remaining command staff and it's very last capital ship doing that. That's a pretty terrible tradeoff to take out a tiny handful of Star Destroyers.

Sure, I do realize that. Obviously that was an awful decision. Please read the original post that I started the thread with.

Watched it again Saturday and I have to issue a correction. Upon watching carefully several of the standard star destroyers are annihilated in the blast. They're actually shown breaking apart in the intense bloom after the impact. However it did appear it was all ships that were behind the Supremacy as if a cone started at the point of impact getting wider as it went back. I'm imagining that it was largely due to shrapnel moving at near light velocity since you can't have a shockwave in space.

But I stand by my point that it didn't seem to react like I would expect a lightspeed impact to happen in terms of it's destructive potential. What was shown is actually way less than I would have expected for the forces involved. Based on how it appears I don't think it would result in a planet killing impact (a big boom sure, but a ship moving at full sublight speed would do that). I would also say the close formation and the fact that the Supremacy was so large contributed to the destruction of the fleet (especially if it was in fact near c velocity shrapnel from the Supremacy). Then it only really is a fleet killing maneuver when the formation and ships involved are similar to this set up (an exceptionally large target capable of blasting out debris at ship killing velocity into a fleet of ships close enough to be damaged by it).

It might raise the question of why the rebels didn't try this against the Death Star though.

On 8.1.2018 at 10:53 PM, FinarinPanjoro said:

It might raise the question of why the rebels didn't try this against the Death Star though.

The death star had about 2 million cubic kilometers volume.
The supremacy had about 3,100 cubic kilometers volume.

Does hyperspace ramming with ships worth hundreds of million credits sounds like the first strategy you try out against it when 30 fighters costs you three million credits and seem to have a better chance of success on top?
DS2 is not even larger than that, but has as well a planetary shield protecting it.

Lastly an operational death star's superlaser should have an easy time dealing with any cruisers in collision course.

On 8.1.2018 at 10:53 PM, FinarinPanjoro said:

Based on how it appears I don't think it would result in a planet killing impact (a big boom sure, but a ship moving at full sublight speed would do that).

Depends what we call planet killing – certainly not blowing it apart, but probably making it uninhabitable.

27 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Lastly an operational death star's superlaser should have an easy time dealing with any cruisers in collision course.

An operational death star 2 would have an easy time with one cruiser. DS1 didn't have the required precision to hit ships at all, DS2 still needed quite a bit of time (wookiepedia says minutes) for recharging.

4 hours ago, Cifer said:

Depends what we call planet killing – certainly not blowing it apart, but probably making it uninhabitable.

Jedha, post-Death Star

Apparently still habitable (not comfortably, but....).

Concord Dawn

Still habitable.

If by habitable you mean "You can survive there within a fully sealed habitat where everything you need is shipped in", true. Anything more than that seems unlikely - the broken crust will have thrown enough dirt into the air to block out the sun for a long time.

2 minutes ago, Cifer said:

If by habitable you mean "You can survive there within a fully sealed habitat where everything you need is shipped in", true. Anything more than that seems unlikely - the broken crust will have thrown enough dirt into the air to block out the sun for a long time.

Characters have been on Jedha without sealed suits for several issues so far.

Concord Dawn has looked downright comfortable when the Rebels characters have visited (without sealed suits).

Well, Concord Dawn at least seems to have had some time to settle down after its catastrophe and the Mandalorians weren't exactly doing much agriculture. But if Jedha is anywhere near habitable (as in, you can support a population there without shipping in pretty much everything they need) while looking like that, Star Wars physics once again work very differently from our own.

3 minutes ago, Cifer said:

But if Jedha is anywhere near habitable (as in, you can support a population there without shipping in pretty much everything they need) while looking like that, Star Wars physics once again work very differently from our own.

Y’think?

Jedha’s Already cold climate is colder. Remnants of Saw’s Partisans are still around without any sort of apparent external supply line. The Empire is essentially strip-mining the place to the nth power for any kyber crystals that might still exist. With that latter in mind (and the methods they’re using), it may not be habitable much longer.

All things equal, it doesn’t seem much worse for wear than Concord Dawn - a world with about 1/3 of it blown away and orbiting with the debris staying relative in a visually dramatic spread.

6 hours ago, Nytwyng said:

Jedha, post-Death Star

The odd part is not that the planet is still habitable. It's star wars after all, the setting can have John Carter's Mars without a problem. The issue is more along the lines of why the **** is the planet so messed up after the rather small hit it took?` Has Tarkin ordered a second strike after the first test shot? ;-)
The destruction we see would have been enough to wipe out the death star which was in a rather low orbit at the moment when it destroyed jedha city. To be fair, it almost looked like the death star should be toast in the movie as well, but still, I think they went overboard with the kind of effect.
(For the debris the rule of cool still applies)