13 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

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?

That's part of the problem. The powers that be just threw that scene into the movie and that's it. Does it have to be a ship worth hundreds of millions of credits or would a silhouette 5 heavy transport work? Maybe that's why the rebels carted those unarmed GR-75s around in every fleet battle. Just in case they decided they needed to save thousands of lives and tons of ships by pressing the imperial fleet autokill hyperspace button. . . It just happened offscreen until TLJ.

That super expensive MC85 did basically only left a dent on a ship over 600 times smaller than the death star. So yeah, you could suicide ram the whole endor fleet into the death star 1 and you would still not have blown it completely to pieces. Assuming that you even get close enough for that, as the death star has not only a super-laser but literally thousands of heavy turbolasers on top.

On the plus side, you might kill the crew via hypermatter radiation. ;-)

There's a 30 minute segment from the Star Wars Show where they discuss various easter eggs and behind-the-scenes elements of The Last Jedi, and Pablo Hidalgo brings up this particular scene.

He cited the only reason it worked within Star Wars physics (such as they are) is that the Raddus was of sufficient size and mass to cause that sort of damage to the Supremacy, and that something like an X-Wing wouldn't have any effect. And even then, it wasn't a sure thing, with various factors that made it more of a gamble than a reliable tactic.

Also (and this part is my conjecture based upon the scene from the movie), it's possible the Supremacy could be repaired, though the Star Destroyers were likely lost causes wrecked simply from the high-speed debris, not unlike the effects of a major multi-car crash on a NASCAR race track, in that they weren't totally obliterated but just so badly damaged as to be inoperable (game terms: suffered a major collision effect that resulted in a severe critical hit that knocked them offline as opposed to all being pushed over their hull trauma threshold). Of course, it'd likely be more cost effective to just scrap the Supremacy and chose/build a new command ship.

Found this on Reddit. Thought it might be useful here.

I was on my way here to post that same link.

1 hour ago, JorArns said:

Found this on Reddit. Thought it might be useful here.

Thanks! So, as far as I can tell, that ship got pretty much cleaved in two (the fourth "camera" alignment shows the damage going all the way to the keel), plus several star destroyers worth of incidental damage. That is certainly one heck of a "dent".

9 minutes ago, Cifer said:

Thanks! So, as far as I can tell, that ship got pretty much cleaved in two (the fourth "camera" alignment shows the damage going all the way to the keel), plus several star destroyers worth of incidental damage. That is certainly one heck of a "dent".

Certainly looks like quite a few we're damaged, some significantly so, imo.

With the new images posted it looks like many of the SDs are a total lost, and the Supremacy has a "clean" break that shears into a 2/3 and 1/3 sections. Given Star Wars Physics and what we know of the First Order, I would not be surprised if their mobile capital/HQ/shipyard/drydock/warship/commandship/carrier can be repaired.

Why aren't all the US navy ships unmanned and filled to the brim with explosives and used solely to ram other big ships of enemy navies?

Because it's a waste of resources and highly situational (not to mention having very low chances to succeed).

Though it was pretty useful for repelling the Spanish Armada, by at least some accounts.

56 minutes ago, Darzil said:

Though it was pretty useful for repelling the Spanish Armada, by at least some accounts.

In a day when guided missiles, Torpedo bombers, and even cannon fire that was accurate beyond 100 yards was a distant dream and purely the realm of science fiction, fireships made a lot of sense.

But today...and in the WWII in spess that is Star Wars... Not so much...

19 hours ago, OddballE8 said:

Why aren't all the US navy ships unmanned and filled to the brim with explosives and used solely to ram other big ships of enemy navies?

Because it's a waste of resources and highly situational (not to mention having very low chances to succeed).

Unmanned stuff filled to the brim with explosives, used to ram other big ships... you mean like the main armament of modern aerial and naval warfare, the missile? The only difference is that engineers have taken off the parts that are not needed for the job and given it a different name.

2 hours ago, Cifer said:

Unmanned stuff filled to the brim with explosives, used to ram other big ships... you mean like the main armament of modern aerial and naval warfare, the missile? The only difference is that engineers have taken off the parts that are not needed for the job and given it a different name.

Do they have missiles in Star Wars?

Yes, you say?

Then why are we having this discussion?

The discussion was the "OMG why doesn't everyone ram ships into other ships all the time!" arguments going on here...

So, again, why doesn't the US Navy build full-size cruisers and battleships that are remotely controlled and used to ram into other ships?

@OddballE8

Do these missiles approach at hyperspeed and take out targets many times their size? No? That's why we're having this discussion.

Just now, Cifer said:

@OddballE8

Do these missiles approach at hyperspeed and take out targets many times their size? No? That's why we're having this discussion.

No, that's not why we're having this discussion.

There's already been plenty of discussion about the effectiveness (or rather, lack there of) of small-mass objects being accelerated to hyperspace speeds impacting enemy ships.

The discussion I'm butting into is the "why doesn't everyone use ships to ram other ships at hyperspace speeds" discussion.
And the answer is; because it's not cost effective, it's highly prone to failure due to enemy fire and it requires you to get really close to the enemy ship.

(There's also the whole "can ships in hyperspace hit ships that are not in hyperspace" question, which I believe has been answered with a "no" already, so you'd have to hit it while accelerating to hyperspace which requires you to be at the right distance from the enemy ship)

@OddballE8

Holdo rammed one heavy cruiser into the heaviest ship the Star Wars universe has ever seen and destroyed it along with large parts of the surrounding fleet. It doesn't get more cost-effective unless your enemies are in the business of just handing over their fleets to you if you ask nicely. And if you can't bring an over-large missile near enough to an enemy (the point where Holdo accelerated from doesn't seem much nearer than for example the distance the battle of Endor was fought at), how do you intend to fight that enemy at all?

7 minutes ago, Cifer said:

@OddballE8

Holdo rammed one heavy cruiser into the heaviest ship the Star Wars universe has ever seen and destroyed it along with large parts of the surrounding fleet. It doesn't get more cost-effective unless your enemies are in the business of just handing over their fleets to you if you ask nicely. And if you can't bring an over-large missile near enough to an enemy (the point where Holdo accelerated from doesn't seem much nearer than for example the distance the battle of Endor was fought at), how do you intend to fight that enemy at all?

And then the First order managed to land their ground forces from this supposedly "destroyed" ship somehow.

Doesn't look like it was very destroyed.

Damaged, yes.

Destroyed, no.

So the Titanic didn't really get destroyed by that iceberg because some lifeboats managed to get away? The First Order was able to field just over a dozen large walkers in the battle, plus some leftovers. Compared to what should fit inside the Supremacy, that is a ridiculously small force, more consistent with the complement of one or two star destroyers.

5 hours ago, Cifer said:

So the Titanic didn't really get destroyed by that iceberg because some lifeboats managed to get away? The First Order was able to field just over a dozen large walkers in the battle, plus some leftovers. Compared to what should fit inside the Supremacy, that is a ridiculously small force, more consistent with the complement of one or two star destroyers.

Yet we don't know that it was all of their available forces.

The Bad Guys underestimating the small but scrappy force of Good Guys and fielding only a token force to defeat them in this franchise goes all the way back to 1977.

Or did the Death Star really count on only a single squadron of TIEs for defense as a routine?

Depends on who allocated the forces. With Kylo "Send every craft to destroy that freighter and focus all fire on that guy on the ground" Ren, I'd imagine the discussion of what to bring along going more like this.

1 minute ago, Cifer said:

Depends on who allocated the forces. With Kylo "Send every craft to destroy that freighter and focus all fire on that guy on the ground" Ren, I'd imagine the discussion of what to bring along going more like this.

Every craft that was there. Focus all fire of the weapons that were there.

The Falcon's presence pushed his buttons. Luke's presence pushed his buttons. Meanwhile, the dozen people in the base included the same mother that he couldn't pull the trigger on earlier in the story.

The way his nerves were fraying from about the end of the throne room sequence onwards, I see the falcon and Luke as more of a cherry on top rather than the one thing that sent him over the edge. And even if he doesn't want to kill his mother, bringing in overwhelming force makes it more likely she'll be taken alive.

31 minutes ago, Cifer said:

The way his nerves were fraying from about the end of the throne room sequence onwards, I see the falcon and Luke as more of a cherry on top rather than the one thing that sent him over the edge. And even if he doesn't want to kill his mother, bringing in overwhelming force makes it more likely she'll be taken alive.

He didn’t know that either the Falcon or Luke would be there. Under that perspective, what they took was certainly an overwhelming force for a dozen or so lightly armed people.

On 2018-01-13 at 3:49 PM, OddballE8 said:

Why aren't all the US navy ships unmanned and filled to the brim with explosives and used solely to ram other big ships of enemy navies?

Because it's a waste of resources and highly situational (not to mention having very low chances to succeed).

I guess you haven’t heard of drones.....

This is perhaps relevant to the discussion; micro jumps in-system and drone ships filled with explosives used in the canon novel Star Wars Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel.

So clearly it’s possible and been done, twice, in canon.