5 hours ago, Khazadune said:

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

I haven't heard of ship sized drones, no.

At least not in military service yet.

And even THEN, I still haven't heard of capital sized ship drones used for ramming maneuvers as a viable military tactic.

8 hours ago, OddballE8 said:

I haven't heard of ship sized drones, no.

At least not in military service yet.

And even THEN, I still haven't heard of capital sized ship drones used for ramming maneuvers as a viable military tactic.

Why use a ship when a missile will do? Comparing real world v space opera is a crap shoot, but let’s face it, if we required a capital ship sized unmanned bomb to get the job done, we’d build it. The First World War involved an explosion so loud it was heard from Belgium all the way to England. The 1,000 Bomber air raids during the Second World War laid waste to whole city blocks. If there is a necessity, it would be a reality. In Star Wars, whatever size needed to destroy a ISD or something on the scope of the DS1 or DS2... they would have built it. These are desperate people backed into a corner. Look at the Kamikazi pilots of Imperial japan. Look at the Suicide Bombers of ISIS. The point I think everyone needs to take from the new canon is that if this is now possible and permissible, that only a writers own restraint withholds this from being the reality.

28 minutes ago, Khazadune said:

Why use a ship when a missile will do? Comparing real world v space opera is a crap shoot, but let’s face it, if we required a capital ship sized unmanned bomb to get the job done, we’d build it. The First World War involved an explosion so loud it was heard from Belgium all the way to England. The 1,000 Bomber air raids during the Second World War laid waste to whole city blocks. If there is a necessity, it would be a reality. In Star Wars, whatever size needed to destroy a ISD or something on the scope of the DS1 or DS2... they would have built it. These are desperate people backed into a corner. Look at the Kamikazi pilots of Imperial japan. Look at the Suicide Bombers of ISIS. The point I think everyone needs to take from the new canon is that if this is now possible and permissible, that only a writers own restraint withholds this from being the reality.

Ah, but there are plenty of other ways to take down capital class ships in the SW universe already.

My point is that this whole "why doesn't everyone do this all the time" argument is pointless because if it was that good of a tactic, people would do it in real life too all the time.

13 hours ago, OddballE8 said:

My point is that this whole "why doesn't everyone do this all the time" argument is pointless because if it was that good of a tactic, people would do it in real life too all the time.

Because Real Life is just brimming with city-sized spacecraft that we could ram at near-lightspeed?

5 hours ago, Cifer said:

Because Real Life is just brimming with city-sized spacecraft that we could ram at near-lightspeed?

Plenty of big ships out there.

6 minutes ago, OddballE8 said:

Plenty of big ships out there.

Any of them city-sized travelling at near-lightspeed?

1 minute ago, Cifer said:

Any of them city-sized travelling at near-lightspeed?

Do they have to be?

Is this entire argument based on the size of the ship?

Is it somehow more valid to use a ship that most likely takes years to build to blow up another one at a one-time cost of insane amounts of manpower and resources, just because it's bigger?

The point here is, it's not something that's going to be put into regular use by anyone because of the insane cost involved for what is essentially a one-use weapon that takes years to build and costs you way more than it's worth as a weapon.
Especially if you account for the fact that it seems you have to be pretty close to use it in the first place, and run a large risk of having the "weapon" (ie. ship) destroyed before it even gets to be used in the first place.

I mean, how many of those bombers could they have built at the price of that one gigantic capital ship? A few thousand?
They could have just sent a few thousand of those bombers instead and the ship would most likely not have been able to shoot down all of them in time.

@OddballE8

The argument is based on the size of the target and (far more importantly) the speed of the attacker. Small targets are presumably more difficult to hit and, what's more important, don't cost as much to replace. And while we currently live in a time where anything moving at a speed commonly associated with ships will get shot to pieces before it can ram anything, that's obviously not true for vessels moving at lightspeed.

19 hours ago, Khazadune said:

In Star Wars, whatever size needed to destroy a ISD .. they would have built it …

They have build proton torpedos. A dozen of those seems to be about enough to kill an ISD anyway. The single B-Wing squadron present in the battle of endor killed about a dozen or so ISDs on their own and went basically on a killing spree against the imperial capital ships. Which is btw ironic, because people complained about the Rebels prototype being OP, while the production version had in the return of the jedi script a much more devastating track record. °_^

7 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

They have build proton torpedos. A dozen of those seems to be about enough to kill an ISD anyway. The single B-Wing squadron present in the battle of endor killed about a dozen or so ISDs on their own and went basically on a killing spree against the imperial capital ships. Which is btw ironic, because people complained about the Rebels prototype being OP, while the production version had in the return of the jedi script a much more devastating track record. °_^

Oh for sure, the starfighters that are employed are hella effective already, which may discount the need for any sort of hyperspace-utilizing weapon, but the point was more about necessity as the mother of invention... so if it’s necessary we now know it is possible. Cost benefit analysis and effectiveness would be determinations for the leadership of whichever force to conduct, but the canon possibility opens up the door... and therefore if our players wanted to make use of it in games, technically it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility. But GMs are the final arbiter of their sessions and will have to evaluate how they do or do not allow these things. It would be a can of worms, but technically, FFG or SW itself should address this canonically so that there is a reference point for scope and scale beyond the visual storytelling of TLJ... that leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Most people can’t even agree whether it was effective in destroying Snooks ship etc.

Maybe a better question we need to start asking if we accept that this is canonical, is that of, “How do we deal with this mechanically if it is enacted in our sessions?” (I.E. what checks are involved, how do we calculate damage etc. I believe there was already a discussion of ramming ships after Rogue One in one of the forums and either RAW or unofficial mechanics for that. There is a ram attachment, no? Seems like there must be rules for ramming? We might just need to evaluate how (if at all) these rules would change with hyperspace use?

Regular ramming is piloting check, the difficulty is the same as for GtA, so based on speed difference between the targets. It creates a collision and uses the collision rules. This is ruled in Stay on Target, right above the ram attachment on page 65.
Hyperspace ramming at the other hand seems appropriate to use a astrogation check instead and a most likely a modification on the critical hit role.

Rules for collisions are in the grey box in the taking damage section of the vehicle rules, Page 256 AoR-CRB for example.
The grey box in the hyperspace astrogation section of rules even explicitly mentioned devastating damage to ships and environment in case of a collision with a mass shadow in hyperspace. (AoR-CRB p.261)

Now for the hyperspace ramming, something like an impossible astrogation check at close/engaged range to the target seems about right. Adding a +100 to the crit for both ships and don't applying a reduction to the critical hit from defense sounds about right. An impossible check on mechanics or computers to remove the safety measures of the hyperspace drive seems like a good idea before … and as mentioned in the collision rules: If the size difference is to big, the large ship might ignore the collision … you might simply reduce the critical hit by difference in silhouette x2 for the larger ship or decide on the fly. Afterwards radiation from the explosion might start killing everything around the point of impact quickly.

1 hour ago, SEApocalypse said:

Regular ramming is piloting check, the difficulty is the same as for GtA, so based on speed difference between the targets. It creates a collision and uses the collision rules. This is ruled in Stay on Target, right above the ram attachment on page 65.
Hyperspace ramming at the other hand seems appropriate to use a astrogation check instead and a most likely a modification on the critical hit role.

Rules for collisions are in the grey box in the taking damage section of the vehicle rules, Page 256 AoR-CRB for example.
The grey box in the hyperspace astrogation section of rules even explicitly mentioned devastating damage to ships and environment in case of a collision with a mass shadow in hyperspace. (AoR-CRB p.261)

Now for the hyperspace ramming, something like an impossible astrogation check at close/engaged range to the target seems about right. Adding a +100 to the crit for both ships and don't applying a reduction to the critical hit from defense sounds about right. An impossible check on mechanics or computers to remove the safety measures of the hyperspace drive seems like a good idea before … and as mentioned in the collision rules: If the size difference is to big, the large ship might ignore the collision … you might simply reduce the critical hit by difference in silhouette x2 for the larger ship or decide on the fly. Afterwards radiation from the explosion might start killing everything around the point of impact quickly.

Thank you to the links to the ramming rules, I thought there was something but couldn’t remember.

I think that’s a reasonable mechanics ruling. I don’t know of any source of canon reference to the radiation though, is that something that has been done? If so, we would then have to figure out some checks against resilience or something.

There was an incident during the clone wars which lead to a cruiser hitting a planet because of a hyperdrive malfunction. The planet was damage to the core and everyone in orbit died from hypermatter radiation. The whole system was contaminated and everyone on the planet died as well. Mind you, this was a republic cruiser, (most likely) many thousands times larger than a sil4 freighter. Not making hyperlanes a mix of debris fields and deadly radiation fields might be another reason why hyperspace attacks usually are not a thing. Especially if this kind of radiation might have the potential to linger around for a long time.

15 hours ago, Cifer said:

@OddballE8

The argument is based on the size of the target and (far more importantly) the speed of the attacker. Small targets are presumably more difficult to hit and, what's more important, don't cost as much to replace. And while we currently live in a time where anything moving at a speed commonly associated with ships will get shot to pieces before it can ram anything, that's obviously not true for vessels moving at lightspeed.

But then you start arguing that you can move at lightspeed and hit a target from a very long distance away, but that doesn't seem to be true, since Holdo had to not only turn around, but also proceed to close the distance before engaging the hyperdrive.
Thus indicating that you can't just travel at "near hyperspace" speeds indefinately (which makes sense, or everyone would do that all the time), but instead you'll only do that for a short distance while going from sublight speed into hyperspace.

Meaning, it would have a pretty short "activation" range, if you will. So it would be prone to get shot to pieces before it could ram anything.

@OddballE8

The "pretty short" range still seems to be within usual combat distance from the visuals we got on screen, the sort where most combat takes place. Unless no space combat ever happens because everyone is afraid of moving into the enemy's instant death radius, that's just a complication, not a deal-breaker. Again, the tactic doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be better.

You can be shot at while implementing it. Can you be shot at while in regular space combat? Yes.
You will lose a (drone) vessel with this tactic. Will you lose a vessel in regular combat against a foe this powerful? No, you'll probably lose half a fleet.

6 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

There was an incident during the clone wars which lead to a cruiser hitting a planet because of a hyperdrive malfunction. The planet was damage to the core and everyone in orbit died from hypermatter radiation. The whole system was contaminated and everyone on the planet died as well. Mind you, this was a republic cruiser, (most likely) many thousands times larger than a sil4 freighter. Not making hyperlanes a mix of debris fields and deadly radiation fields might be another reason why hyperspace attacks usually are not a thing. Especially if this kind of radiation might have the potential to linger around for a long time.

Planet being Pammant, Republic Praetor-class Star Battlecruiser Quaestor hit it, in 19 BBY according to Legends Wookieepedia. Also mentioned in Strongholds of Resistance.

7 hours ago, Cifer said:

@OddballE8

The "pretty short" range still seems to be within usual combat distance from the visuals we got on screen, the sort where most combat takes place. Unless no space combat ever happens because everyone is afraid of moving into the enemy's instant death radius, that's just a complication, not a deal-breaker. Again, the tactic doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be better.

You can be shot at while implementing it. Can you be shot at while in regular space combat? Yes.
You will lose a (drone) vessel with this tactic. Will you lose a vessel in regular combat against a foe this powerful? No, you'll probably lose half a fleet.

Here's the thing, though... It would seem the only reason this worked was because the Imperials New Order officers willfully ignored her actions until it was too late.
If this became a common tactics, it wouldn't be that hard to stop.

As for your cavalier way of saying "it's only a drone vessel", that seems to completely miss the point that making a drone vessel of that size with that mass would cost almost as much as one that has full combat capabilities.
So losing it would cost you almost as much as losing a capital ship, and that's not something you want to do on a regular basis.

It's also a very expensive tactic even if it works. It's not like the rebels are swimming in resources and cash here... You might build a capital sized drone ship and use it to take out an enemy capital ship (or even several, if you're really lucky), but that would still cost the rebels more than it would the New Order.
Those guys have enough resources to convert an entire planet into a gigantic space cannon, and to build a ship the size of ten Executor-class star destroyers just to show off...

If you think you're gonna win a war of attrition against them by using a nearly 1 to 1 rate of attrition, you're daft.

I never understood the argument that you must be close for this to work. There is actually no evidence this is true. In fact, evidence we have suggests that you wouldn’t need to be. For example, in Catalyst we have ships performing in-system micro jumps. (In Catalyst we also have drone piloted ships) This means you need not be close, but rather merely plot a course accurately, with variables causing it to be increasingly hard to hit if it’s performing evasive maneuvers etc. But if it’s a stationary or very large object, well then that’s a breeze.

The argument I see being made for the run up distance seems to be that of Holdo turning the ship around. Likely the delay is merely her plotting a course, not one or distance to target. And even then, does she really go very far from turning around to jumping? Like 20-30 seconds? That’s not really conclusive proof of anything.

The argument for having to be close (relatively speaking) is due to timing. If you jump to soon (too far out) you just successfully jump into hyperspace.

1 hour ago, OddballE8 said:

As for your cavalier way of saying "it's only a drone vessel", that seems to completely miss the point that making a drone vessel of that size with that mass would cost almost as much as one that has full combat capabilities.
So losing it would cost you almost as much as losing a capital ship, and that's not something you want to do on a regular basis.

It's also a very expensive tactic even if it works. It's not like the rebels are swimming in resources and cash here... You might build a capital sized drone ship and use it to take out an enemy capital ship (or even several, if you're really lucky), but that would still cost the rebels more than it would the New Order.
Those guys have enough resources to convert an entire planet into a gigantic space cannon, and to build a ship the size of ten Executor-class star destroyers just to show off...

If you think you're gonna win a war of attrition against them by using a nearly 1 to 1 rate of attrition, you're daft.

To be quite honest, I've argued this stuff over I believe three threads by now. Please read at least my first post from this very thread. No, I do not think the Resistance can win a war of attrition. No, what Holdo did was likely more on a scale of 1:100, going by pure tonnage. Yes, the film's entire message is that grandiose victories are meaningless when you can't afford them. Yes, the "only a drone vessel" was merely meant to deflect another criticism of the tactic, which is the reprehensibility of organized suicide attacks.

That does not matter for the discussion, because not every war in Star Wars is fought between vastly uneven forces. And when we get to wars like the Trade Federation versus the Republic, we do get to ask the question why the Trade Federation (which did make use of the largest automated force seen in Star Wars and tended towards very cavalier use of disposable units) didn't use that tactic. They didn't need to charge a capital ship into a super-capital ship - but scaled down, an old freighter protected by more standard fleet units might have taken out a Venator.

2 hours ago, Nytwyng said:

The argument for having to be close (relatively speaking) is due to timing. If you jump to soon (too far out) you just successfully jump into hyperspace.

That argument again relies on supposition of an entry point vector being required for an impact, which is not confirmed but merely assumed. The fact that hyperspace collisions do occur in canon should be sufficient to disprove it.

1 hour ago, Cifer said:

To be quite honest, I've argued this stuff over I believe three threads by now. Please read at least my first post from this very thread. No, I do not think the Resistance can win a war of attrition. No, what Holdo did was likely more on a scale of 1:100, going by pure tonnage. Yes, the film's entire message is that grandiose victories are meaningless when you can't afford them. Yes, the "only a drone vessel" was merely meant to deflect another criticism of the tactic, which is the reprehensibility of organized suicide attacks.

That does not matter for the discussion, because not every war in Star Wars is fought between vastly uneven forces. And when we get to wars like the Trade Federation versus the Republic, we do get to ask the question why the Trade Federation (which did make use of the largest automated force seen in Star Wars and tended towards very cavalier use of disposable units) didn't use that tactic. They didn't need to charge a capital ship into a super-capital ship - but scaled down, an old freighter protected by more standard fleet units might have taken out a Venator.

I agree, especially since we see in TCW vulture droids used as Kamikazi ships. This again reinforces the need to have a proper explanation in canon. Meaning a reference to hypermatter radiation or some such mitigating factor that would result in Pyrric victories. Clearly there is a disproportionate advantage to the side using smaller hyperspace weapons. (Loved the tonnage comment, reminds me of the WWII tallies for uboat victims.)

again though, wouldn’t it be awesome if they used this “tech” to explain the Great Hyperspace War? Would really throw people off the way I think many were when we discovered the clone wars involved droids lol. They needn’t make the entire war revolve around the weapon but maybe it’s introduction and then the subsequent effects of its use. That would explain away the problems some have with this while building on the canon of the universe.

1 hour ago, Cifer said:

To be quite honest, I've argued this stuff over I believe three threads by now. Please read at least my first post from this very thread. No, I do not think the Resistance can win a war of attrition. No, what Holdo did was likely more on a scale of 1:100, going by pure tonnage. Yes, the film's entire message is that grandiose victories are meaningless when you can't afford them. Yes, the "only a drone vessel" was merely meant to deflect another criticism of the tactic, which is the reprehensibility of organized suicide attacks.

That does not matter for the discussion, because not every war in Star Wars is fought between vastly uneven forces. And when we get to wars like the Trade Federation versus the Republic, we do get to ask the question why the Trade Federation (which did make use of the largest automated force seen in Star Wars and tended towards very cavalier use of disposable units) didn't use that tactic. They didn't need to charge a capital ship into a super-capital ship - but scaled down, an old freighter protected by more standard fleet units might have taken out a Venator.

Well, the answer to that is simple.
Because they weren't meant to win.

Palpatine was behind the whole thing and he didn't want them to win, so he would have forbidden such a tactic on a massive scale.

3 minutes ago, OddballE8 said:

Well, the answer to that is simple.
Because they weren't meant to win.

Palpatine was behind the whole thing and he didn't want them to win, so he would have forbidden such a tactic on a massive scale.

I think he was merely controlling all outcomes. If CIS wins, he wins. If Republic wins, he wins. He only came on the Republic side when he was sure he had the win in the bag.

Just now, OddballE8 said:

Well, the answer to that is simple.
Because they weren't meant to win.

Palpatine was behind the whole thing and he didn't want them to win, so he would have forbidden such a tactic on a massive scale.

Firstly, it was irrelevant to Palpatine who won - he would have emerged victorious either way because he was well-positioned in the hierarchy of both sides. The irrelevance of the actual outcome was the whole point of the war. Secondly, while he could certainly manipulate stuff, I don't think he could have explained away a prohibition on a whole class of tactics that prove to be supremely effective, just like when he wanted the Seperatists to actually and finally lose, he had to send Vader rather than just telling them to disband.

It would still be prohibitively costly to use that tactics.

Let's say you use an old freighter like you said in your example.

Now, the Raddus is (in rough numbers) 3400x700x460 meters in size. If you look at the Gif in this thread of the impact on the Supremacy, it doesn't really do much more than cut through it in a straight line. You don't see a massive explosion in the Supremacy, you see it getting cut in half.
Yes, there are plenty of damage to the other ships behind it, but the main damage to the Supremacy seems to be a relatively clean cut right through it.
So it stands to reason that the impact is less of an explosive one and more of a cutting one.

If you did that with an old freighter (let's use a G9 rigger for example) against a Venator, you'd most likely get a bullethole straight through it. In a best case scenario, you'd get the same cutting effect that Holdo acieved on the Supremacy.

But unless you hit that Venator just right, you'd most likely not take it out of commission completely.

And it would still be a one-shot weapon that costs a lot more than say a couple of heavy turbolasers that can fire an almost infinite amount of shots compared to that one-shot weapon that may or may not do damage to the enemy. (remember, you can't just buy any old G9 and smash it into the enemy. You'd have to set it up as a drone or at least have a capable pilot droid in there, increasing the cost of the unit)
And if it was a commonly used tactics, then any navy would start to target those old freighters first, so you'd have to either fit them with more armour and heavy duty shields (because they'd be going up against turbolasers, Ion cannonsand missiles and the like), or possibly buying better and more agile freighters (for a much higher price), or you'd have to have a lot of them to make sure you'd score a hit.

Now, that might sound great to you, but to a military that can build weapons that don't require ammo, having an armada of one-shot weapons that cost more than several capital class weapons with infinite ammo wouldn't make much sense unless it was guaranteed to work every time.
But it's not.
The first time, yes.
The second time? Maybe.
The third time? Not a chance. The enemy would be all over those freighters in a heartbeat and concentrating all their fire on them immediately.

Now, you could argue about how it was hard to stop kamikaze planes during WWII, but they were hardly flying old transport planes, now were they? And besides, they were still not all that effective. According to the US Navy: "Approximately 2,800 Kamikaze attackers sunk 34 Navy ships, damaged 368 others, killed 4,900 sailors, and wounded over 4,800. Despite radar detection and cuing, airborne interception and attrition, and massive anti-aircraft barrages, a distressing 14 percent of Kamikazes survived to score a hit on a ship; nearly 8.5 percent of all ships hit by Kamikazes sank"

Now, like I said, those were not done by pilots flying old transport planes. They were flying agile fighter planes in most cases.

Again, this comes down to effectiveness versus cost.
And this is effectively just "ammunition" that costs more than several Heavy Turbolasers combined... for one shot.