55 minutes ago, OddballE8 said:

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.

That’s a misrepresentation of the cost/benefits of this strategy but I think you know that.

I am loathe to discuss movie displayed combat scenes and call them “accurate” as they tend to exist on screen until it’s expedient for them not to... but I’ll go there for a second. In ROTJ we see a single A Wing slam into the bridge of a 16 km long SSD and that impact cripples the vessel.

In TLJ a single Mon Cal slices through the largest ship ever created causing it to be cut in twain and presumably lost. (We see Phasma fall into a crevasse the size of a small spaceport filled with flames, and the entire main hangar completely in ruin.) That’s before we talk about the ISD’s behind it that also suffered severe damage. To inflict equivalent damage to a fleet of 30 capital ships and The Supremacy would have taken at least a dozen Capital Ships, with squadrons of fighters and hundreds of thousands of people... which would have all been lost in the process.

Now, to win the battle you would be talking something in the order of 35-40 ships, probably 6 wings of fighters at least and almost a half million people for skeleton crews alone.

So I’ll let you calculate the cost of one Mon Cal Cruiser and Holdo verses a fleet on the scale of those at Jakku or Endor to inflict the same damage.

There is no way that a cost/benefit analysis could see these as remotely equivalent. Your turbolaser example fails to account for the chances that said weapon will actually accomplish the goal. Employing any of the many turbolasers on Holdo’s ship would not have been likely to take a single Imperial ship down. To effect the same results you would need fleets if batteries and the resulting shields, engines, hulls, communications, fighter screens, crews etc etc etc that make that possible.

1 hour ago, OddballE8 said:

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.

In addition to what Khazadune said, note that the "clean cut" bisected a 4km tall warship vertically. The Raddus is only 400m tall, meaning it made a "cut" of ten times its actual size.

3 hours ago, Khazadune said:

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.

No. Not really, the CIS was winning anyway until Palpatine killed the military leadership and used his knowledge to deal the problem once he had himself established as emperor and started his new order.

6 hours ago, Khazadune said:

That’s a misrepresentation of the cost/benefits of this strategy but I think you know that.

I am loathe to discuss movie displayed combat scenes and call them “accurate” as they tend to exist on screen until it’s expedient for them not to... but I’ll go there for a second. In ROTJ we see a single A Wing slam into the bridge of a 16 km long SSD and that impact cripples the vessel.

In TLJ a single Mon Cal slices through the largest ship ever created causing it to be cut in twain and presumably lost. (We see Phasma fall into a crevasse the size of a small spaceport filled with flames, and the entire main hangar completely in ruin.) That’s before we talk about the ISD’s behind it that also suffered severe damage. To inflict equivalent damage to a fleet of 30 capital ships and The Supremacy would have taken at least a dozen Capital Ships, with squadrons of fighters and hundreds of thousands of people... which would have all been lost in the process.

Now, to win the battle you would be talking something in the order of 35-40 ships, probably 6 wings of fighters at least and almost a half million people for skeleton crews alone.

So I’ll let you calculate the cost of one Mon Cal Cruiser and Holdo verses a fleet on the scale of those at Jakku or Endor to inflict the same damage.

There is no way that a cost/benefit analysis could see these as remotely equivalent. Your turbolaser example fails to account for the chances that said weapon will actually accomplish the goal. Employing any of the many turbolasers on Holdo’s ship would not have been likely to take a single Imperial ship down. To effect the same results you would need fleets if batteries and the resulting shields, engines, hulls, communications, fighter screens, crews etc etc etc that make that possible.

Firstly, it's only cost effective if it's successful each time, and the likelihood of that will decrease exponentially with each use. Keeping that in mind, it wouldn't take long for the cost to exceed the cost of that fleet of 35-40 ships and 6 wings of fighters, and most of those could be used repeatedly (only the fighters would suffer any regular losses as capital ship losses are usually avoided during battles).

Secondly, you're confusing my calculations up there. I was comparing the cost of one old and used freighter to the cost of turbolasers, not the cost of holdos ship to the cost of turbolasers. You could buy A LOT of weaponry and such for the cost of holdos ship.
****, you could probably buy enough bombers to be able to take down the supremacy.
But again, it wouldn't be cost effective, since a one-weapon army is an army that's easy to defeat.
Besides, to make that tactic have any kind of chance, you'd STILL have to have fleets of batteries and shields, engines, hulls, communications, fighter screens, etc just to make it possible for the ship to approach the enemy enough to line up their hyperspace jump.

6 hours ago, Cifer said:

In addition to what Khazadune said, note that the "clean cut" bisected a 4km tall warship vertically. The Raddus is only 400m tall, meaning it made a "cut" of ten times its actual size.

It's 4k at it's tallest... the mid section.
Holdos ship didn't impact the mid section. It impacted the much thinner "wing" part.
Sure, it's still thicker than the Raddus, but still... it's not ten times its size.

3 hours ago, OddballE8 said:

It's 4k at it's tallest... the mid section.
Holdos ship didn't impact the mid section. It impacted the much thinner "wing" part.
Sure, it's still thicker than the Raddus, but still... it's not ten times its size.

Looking at the gif again, she hits pretty close to the center - so alright, maybe it was just eight times the size.

As for the rest, I'm somewhat... confused, I must admit. So the missile ships will get shot down and they're ships anyway, meaning they are a large ressource expenditure whereas turbolasers are free. Who's firing these turbolasers and why aren't they getting shot down when they enter that mysterious instant death radius for combat? And anyway, why is anyone still building capital ships at all when they can be shot down as easily as you say?

6 minutes ago, Cifer said:

And anyway, why is anyone still building capital ships at all when they can be shot down as easily as you say?

Because small ships are much less efficient and transporting goods, ground forces and superweapons I guess.

2 minutes ago, Darzil said:

Because small ships are much less efficient and transporting goods, ground forces and superweapons I guess.

That's obviously true, but that would mean carriers rather than battleships - star destroyers are a mixture of both rather than focused on the carrier role. And in TLJ, the First Order was quite reluctant to send in their fighters and bombers without support by the capital ships.

3 hours ago, Cifer said:

Looking at the gif again, she hits pretty close to the center - so alright, maybe it was just eight times the size.

As for the rest, I'm somewhat... confused, I must admit. So the missile ships will get shot down and they're ships anyway, meaning they are a large ressource expenditure whereas turbolasers are free. Who's firing these turbolasers and why aren't they getting shot down when they enter that mysterious instant death radius for combat? And anyway, why is anyone still building capital ships at all when they can be shot down as easily as you say?

Wait... you're doing it again... you're mixing arguments here.

You said they could just use an old freighter... which I said would get shot to pieces fast, and then you say "why is anyone still building capital ships at all when they can be shot down as easily as you say"...

Either it's a cheap and disposable freighter or it's a massively expensive and not very disposable capital ship. Pick one for your argument here...

Let's use both of the examples here:

Capital Ship
This would just be too resource expensive. You're using up massive amounts of precious metals and materials, not to mention expensive and large systems like engines and shields to essentially build a gargantuan missile.
And once it's been used once, the enemy will know about it and adapt their tactics for it. Intercepting it with fighters and medium ships before it even reaches the launch distance to use the hyperspace drive. These could easily take out the engines and render the whole thing useless before it even becomes a threat, since there won't be anyone manning the guns, unless this is a mass suicide mission (actually, there wouldn't be any guns anyway, as a cost saving measure, I bet).

"Any old freighter"
This would be risky from the get-go, as you'd have to hit a capital ship in the right spot to take it out for good (and not just cripple it, leaving it to be repaired later). And then the other issues still remain.
You'd either have to fit the ship with high-capacity shields and make it maneuverable and have a droid pilot, or you'd have to have a lot of them to make sure you'd get your shot.
Because after that first incident, the enemy will start targeting all "old freighters" in the enemy fleet as a priority.
You'd need a fighter screen to keep enemy fighters off them long enough, and you'd need some battleships or capital ships to keep off anything larger.
And if you're doing that, you're already up to the size of what you'd need to effectively fight the enemy ship in regular combat anyway, and you're just wasting money on very expensive and single-use projectiles with no guarantee that they'll work.

As for costs, even ships that are knocked out or even destroyed in combat often leave raw material behind that can be salvaged. Often times, vehicles that are knocked out can be refitted and repaired at a much lower cost than building a completely new one.
But every single one that does a hyperspace ram is vaporized, it would seem (or sent into hyperspace, I don't know. But there didn't seem to be much left of the ship after that ram)

(Oh and "instant death radius for combat"? Hyperbole much? Let's have a civilized argument here, ok?)

1 hour ago, OddballE8 said:

Wait... you're doing it again... you're mixing arguments here.

You said they could just use an old freighter... which I said would get shot to pieces fast, and then you say "why is anyone still building capital ships at all when they can be shot down as easily as you say"...

Either it's a cheap and disposable freighter or it's a massively expensive and not very disposable capital ship. Pick one for your argument here...

Let's use both of the examples here:

Capital Ship
This would just be too resource expensive. You're using up massive amounts of precious metals and materials, not to mention expensive and large systems like engines and shields to essentially build a gargantuan missile.
And once it's been used once, the enemy will know about it and adapt their tactics for it. Intercepting it with fighters and medium ships before it even reaches the launch distance to use the hyperspace drive. These could easily take out the engines and render the whole thing useless before it even becomes a threat, since there won't be anyone manning the guns, unless this is a mass suicide mission (actually, there wouldn't be any guns anyway, as a cost saving measure, I bet).

"Any old freighter"
This would be risky from the get-go, as you'd have to hit a capital ship in the right spot to take it out for good (and not just cripple it, leaving it to be repaired later). And then the other issues still remain.
You'd either have to fit the ship with high-capacity shields and make it maneuverable and have a droid pilot, or you'd have to have a lot of them to make sure you'd get your shot.
Because after that first incident, the enemy will start targeting all "old freighters" in the enemy fleet as a priority.
You'd need a fighter screen to keep enemy fighters off them long enough, and you'd need some battleships or capital ships to keep off anything larger.
And if you're doing that, you're already up to the size of what you'd need to effectively fight the enemy ship in regular combat anyway, and you're just wasting money on very expensive and single-use projectiles with no guarantee that they'll work.

As for costs, even ships that are knocked out or even destroyed in combat often leave raw material behind that can be salvaged. Often times, vehicles that are knocked out can be refitted and repaired at a much lower cost than building a completely new one.
But every single one that does a hyperspace ram is vaporized, it would seem (or sent into hyperspace, I don't know. But there didn't seem to be much left of the ship after that ram)

(Oh and "instant death radius for combat"? Hyperbole much? Let's have a civilized argument here, ok?)

Your argument imagines some particular invented ship specifically for ramming. That’s not even required. Take your thought of conventional fleet warfare. If it’s 35 ships or so and all their fighters against the Supremacy and FO fleet... why can’t any one of those ships be used at any time? And why would this be less cost effective than say a straight up battle that will probably see most or all of your fleet destroyed? Because you can’t reuse the ramming ship? You can’t reuse the destroyed ship either. And we’ve seen it take more than a single ship to inflict the kind of Dmg that happens in TLJ.

If it’s cost benefit you are analyzing, then it’s flat out wrong. A single A Wing striking the bridge of the Super Star Destroyer crippled that ship. A squadron of X Wings out of the battlegroup could jump at the FO all day long. Miss? Do it again. One ship for much more is a win. Plus, there is no evidence that you even need to enter conventional weapons range, in the movie she is only because she has to turn around and they are literally following on her tail.

I still don’t know why I’m engaging in this argument as I find the whole thing a silly Deus Ex Machina plot device that was horrible in conception and which destroys the continuity of the universe as a whole (as currently envisioned). So yeah, this is my last post on this topic, it’s been talked to Death, but using the logic applied in your own argument, it makes little sense not to use this.

TLDR: TLJ was poorly thought out and causes nearly irreconciable issues with continuity to the universe’s own internal logic.

10 minutes ago, Khazadune said:

Your argument imagines some particular invented ship specifically for ramming. That’s not even required. Take your thought of conventional fleet warfare. If it’s 35 ships or so and all their fighters against the Supremacy and FO fleet... why can’t any one of those ships be used at any time? And why would this be less cost effective than say a straight up battle that will probably see most or all of your fleet destroyed? Because you can’t reuse the ramming ship? You can’t reuse the destroyed ship either. And we’ve seen it take more than a single ship to inflict the kind of Dmg that happens in TLJ.

If it’s cost benefit you are analyzing, then it’s flat out wrong. A single A Wing striking the bridge of the Super Star Destroyer crippled that ship. A squadron of X Wings out of the battlegroup could jump at the FO all day long. Miss? Do it again. One ship for much more is a win. Plus, there is no evidence that you even need to enter conventional weapons range, in the movie she is only because she has to turn around and they are literally following on her tail.

I still don’t know why I’m engaging in this argument as I find the whole thing a silly Deus Ex Machina plot device that was horrible in conception and which destroys the continuity of the universe as a whole (as currently envisioned). So yeah, this is my last post on this topic, it’s been talked to Death, but using the logic applied in your own argument, it makes little sense not to use this.

TLDR: TLJ was poorly thought out and causes nearly irreconciable issues with continuity to the universe’s own internal logic.

Why couldn't any of those ships be used at any time?

umm... because it would result in the death/suicide of up to thousands of people on board the larger ones?
As for seeing most or all of your fleet destroyed, most battles don't play out like computer games do... in most battles, one side will retreat or surrender long before you've been completely destroyed. In fact, most would retreat long before there's substantial damages to the fleet.

You seem to have gone away from the drone thought and into some sort of weird suicide cult where every pilot (and crew member) in the entire rebel fleet would be willing to suicide right into enemy ships en masse...

It makes little sense to actually use this on a large scale!
If you keep suicideing your troops, it's going to be real difficult trying to recruit new members to the rebels!
Most people would fight for a brighter future, not only for others but for themselves and their families too.
Yes, most would be ready to die for that ideal, but most wouldn't be ready to suicide bomb themselves as a main strategy!

Holdo did this out of sheer desperation.
It's not something that would be viable in the long run.

As for having to be in weapons range, she not only turns around, but she also keeps approaching them for quite a while. It seems obvious that you have to be within a certain range to do damage before entering hyperspace, and that is certainly within weapons range.

3 hours ago, OddballE8 said:

Why couldn't any of those ships be used at any time?

umm... because it would result in the death/suicide of up to thousands of people on board the larger ones?
As for seeing most or all of your fleet destroyed, most battles don't play out like computer games do... in most battles, one side will retreat or surrender long before you've been completely destroyed. In fact, most would retreat long before there's substantial damages to the fleet.

You seem to have gone away from the drone thought and into some sort of weird suicide cult where every pilot (and crew member) in the entire rebel fleet would be willing to suicide right into enemy ships en masse...

It makes little sense to actually use this on a large scale!
If you keep suicideing your troops, it's going to be real difficult trying to recruit new members to the rebels!
Most people would fight for a brighter future, not only for others but for themselves and their families too.
Yes, most would be ready to die for that ideal, but most wouldn't be ready to suicide bomb themselves as a main strategy!

Holdo did this out of sheer desperation.
It's not something that would be viable in the long run.

As for having to be in weapons range, she not only turns around, but she also keeps approaching them for quite a while. It seems obvious that you have to be within a certain range to do damage before entering hyperspace, and that is certainly within weapons range.

She has to plot the course and turn around. If hyperspace had a range requirement it wouldn’t be hyperspace.

Heroic sacrifice is not something an insurgency group has ever convinced its population to do? Clearly there are quite a few willing to die for their causes, and as for desperate, what would you refer to any instance of the rebels/resistance if not desperate? You are stuck on this as a planned and methodical course of action as opposed to something possible.

Your argument has followed these three questions. First it’s a question of cost/benefit, Second it’s a question of scope/scale, third it’s a question of motivation.

1. One vs Many, simple math.

2. Smaller ship destroys largest ship in creation and fleet of others, simple physics.

3. The enemy that literally destroys whole worlds. Yeah, feeling like your sacrifice is probably most appropriate now.

Seriously.

8 hours ago, Khazadune said:

She has to plot the course and turn around. If hyperspace had a range requirement it wouldn’t be hyperspace.

Heroic sacrifice is not something an insurgency group has ever convinced its population to do? Clearly there are quite a few willing to die for their causes, and as for desperate, what would you refer to any instance of the rebels/resistance if not desperate? You are stuck on this as a planned and methodical course of action as opposed to something possible.

Your argument has followed these three questions. First it’s a question of cost/benefit, Second it’s a question of scope/scale, third it’s a question of motivation.

1. One vs Many, simple math.

2. Smaller ship destroys largest ship in creation and fleet of others, simple physics.

3. The enemy that literally destroys whole worlds. Yeah, feeling like your sacrifice is probably most appropriate now.

Seriously.

She's not ramming the ship IN hyperspace, though, she's ramming it while accelerating TO hyperspace. You don't ram other ships IN hyperspace. Which means you'd have to be close enough to impact the enemy ship while accelerating to hyperspace.

1: most people don't resort to suicide quite that easily.
Not even people who are fighting a war against an oppressor. There may be a few, but not enough to use it as a regular tactics all the time.

2: "smaller ship" just happens to be larger than an Imperial Star Destroyer. It's even bigger than a Resurgent-class Star Destroyer (the ship used by the First Order in TFA)
So yes, it might be small in comparison to the largest ship in creation, but it's hardly "small" by any means. And certainly not cost effective to the Resistance. Especially since it didn't seem to kill, but only cripple, the enemy ship.

3: Yes, even an enemy that literally destroys whole worlds would still have people hesitant to suicide to take down one ship out of many.

You seem to be ignoring a lot of issues here.

Firstly, the resistance would run out of manpower and money long before the New Order would run out of ships and resources using this method.

Secondly, you underestimate the human will to live (or "living creature", in this case) in even the most extreme situations.

There is a version of the anthropic principle here.

we only see those tactics that look good on screen. Which means we see heroes that face bad odds and succeed without using tactics we cannot stomach (at least generally), and bad guys with overwhelming power that make mistakes such as being overconfident.

we don’t see the movies where the most powerful side does everything right.

On 20.1.2018 at 1:08 AM, Khazadune said:

3. The enemy that literally destroys whole worlds. Yeah, feeling like your sacrifice is probably most appropriate now.

An enemy that has literally a million capital ships. Yeah, sacrifice yourself, because fighting another day is such a bad idea. Especially when doing as much damage as you can and just jump into hyperspace had been an option to to this point in star wars. TLJ is using hyperspace tracking for the first time in star wars history. Before that point just jumping out had been a successful strategy for basically everyone ... even when you had sometimes to eliminate the interdictor cruiser first.

6 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

An enemy that has literally a million capital ships. Yeah, sacrifice yourself, because fighting another day is such a bad idea. Especially when doing as much damage as you can and just jump into hyperspace had been an option to to this point in star wars. TLJ is using hyperspace tracking for the first time in star wars history. Before that point just jumping out had been a successful strategy for basically everyone ... even when you had sometimes to eliminate the interdictor cruiser first.

I don’t think you know the meaning of literally.

9 hours ago, Khazadune said:

I don’t think you know the meaning of literally.

Cool clip, appeals to nerds.
And most importantly. It is super ironic because star wars sold for 4 billion dollars.

Though I like this one literally even more:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/misuse-of-literally

Speaking of the use and misuse of literally: The empire has literally millions of capital ships and tens of thousand of them can literally destroy a planet. Have we mentioned delta base zero already?

On 2018-01-22 at 10:04 AM, SEApocalypse said:

Cool clip, appeals to nerds.
And most importantly. It is super ironic because star wars sold for 4 billion dollars.

Though I like this one literally even more:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/misuse-of-literally

Speaking of the use and misuse of literally: The empire has literally millions of capital ships and tens of thousand of them can literally destroy a planet. Have we mentioned delta base zero already?

Again, I don’t believe they literally have millions of ships in the Empire, but even if they did/do, we were talking about the First Order, which does not. That said... planet killing weapons are not new to the saga known for its introduction with a planet killing weapon. The USE of such means is what is abhorrent to the galaxy. That’s why after Alderaan there is such a boost to the Rebellion, and, one would imagine, after TFA there would also be a surge in those who abhor the First Order.

Many countries have Nukes, but the use of Nukes would probably lead to worldwide condemnation... if anyone was around to do so after.

The points that I have made above too many times to re-iterate here still holds true. The clip you showed has someone heroically sacrifice themself. Obi Wan heroically sacrifices himself so that Luke and co. can get away. Fin tries to heroically sacrifice himself against the stupid battering ram bull. Rose’s sister heroically sacrifices herself to take out the Dreadnaught. On and on, the entire SW universe is replete with heroic sacrifices.

TLJ wants to paint them as Pyrric... that’s another discussion for another point, but the fact that people continually do it and have the ability to hyperspace ram... that means we should see more of it, likely will see more of it... unless some argument can be made against its use. (Which I have also covered in previous posts)

I think you mistake my discussion as some validation of tactics in use, when really it’s pointing to the logical conclusion of what is and has been done vs. What is permissible and likely to be done (when permissible).

And again for the argument farther up the chain, for the millionth time, there is nothing in canon that prevents hyperspace impacts. In fact, it’s been established from the start that the reason you have to do such intense astrological checks is to prevent impacts... thus meaning that hyperspace ramming does not need to be outside hyperspace. You can disagree if you like, as you have, but it’s just what canon has established.

Countless fighters and small ships, about a million capital ships smaller than star destroyers, 25,000 star destroyers and a few command ships like the executor. Literally. ;-)

On 2018-01-26 at 3:50 PM, SEApocalypse said:

Countless fighters and small ships, about a million capital ships small than star destroyers, 25,000 star destroyers and a few command ships like the executor. Literally. ;-)

Okay, I take back my criticism, if that is an accurate figure, well, okay. I just thought it was one of those offhand remarks. I still assume the FO does not have nearly the fleet size for that. They couldn’t have abducted that many children. That’s probably why the pre-emotive strike was so important to their plans.

One thing I don’t get is the timeline, we know the FO came back to the universe with Starkiller Base, but when you read novels like “Canto Bight” they refer to the conflict as if it’s been raging for years. Even saying things that indicate a wealth of past associations. Yet we are also led to believe that only a few days pass between TFA and TLJ... has there ever been an official timeline of hostilities entered into canon?

9 hours ago, Khazadune said:

One thing I don’t get is the timeline, we know the FO came back to the universe with Starkiller Base, but when you read novels like “Canto Bight” they refer to the conflict as if it’s been raging for years. Even saying things that indicate a wealth of past associations. Yet we are also led to believe that only a few days pass between TFA and TLJ... has there ever been an official timeline of hostilities entered into canon?

There have been conflict between the resistance and the first order for years it seems. Though mostly covered operations. Poe for example defects from the new republic to the resistance based on his assumption that the first order was responsible for an attack and tries to proof it. His squadron ends up in a goose chase this way and Leia picks him basically up based him thinking for himself, supporting the cause and ignoring orders. He continues to be that guy during the events of the last jedi. ;-)

Shipwise the first order is indeed much, much smaller. While they have some support from within the new republic, they still seems to have thousands of their star destroyers, which are large enough to be classified as super star destroyers under the old empire. The strength of the first order is based on a 30 years build up. With the resources from the unknown region, stealing and raiding whole systems, slave labor, etc … but all on the fringes of civilizard space and with the support from members of the new republic senate. 30 Years of build up is a longer time than Palpatine's empire did last … meanwhile the new republic demilitarized.

3 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

13 hours ago, Khazadune said:

There have been conflict between the resistance and the first order for years it seems.

In fact, for years, there is NO conflict. The FO works like a mirror Empire: it begins in the Unknown Regions and slowly occupies worlds in the Outer Rim (while the Empire spread from the Core). The NR, still struggling to build a working Senate and pulling worlds into its folds, demilitarized by Mon Mothma, can only arrange itself with the slowly spreading influence of the FO. As the FO takes every step necessary to maintain the picture of "bringing order" to "worlds that wilfully join", there's not much the NR can or even wants to do.

In fact, Leia has not much backing in the senate, and is even seen as a troublemaker, especially by those already on the payroll of the FO. So, it's in fact HER Resistance, made up of people that believe her. It's small, chronically low on resources and personel, and almost without suppport by the NR.

I understand the Jakku trap trap and the subsequent exodus, the build up in unknown regions and the child abductions/political intrigues in the senate (buying candidates etc). I’m aware of the Mon Mothma moronic disarmament policy and the then need for the “Resistance” what I guess I’m stuck on are; 1) When did the FO openly engage in hostilities for the first time where the universe became aware of them? (As far as I can tell that’s during TFA.) 2) What amount of time passes between TFA and TLJ? (It appears to begin at the same moment for Rey, but then this could have been outside the rest of the story progression as we don’t see her travel time etc... so, do we assume a few weeks? Do we assume months? Is this established?)

1 hour ago, Khazadune said:

I understand the Jakku trap trap and the subsequent exodus, the build up in unknown regions and the child abductions/political intrigues in the senate (buying candidates etc). I’m aware of the Mon Mothma moronic disarmament policy and the then need for the “Resistance” what I guess I’m stuck on are; 1) When did the FO openly engage in hostilities for the first time where the universe became aware of them? (As far as I can tell that’s during TFA.) 2) What amount of time passes between TFA and TLJ? (It appears to begin at the same moment for Rey, but then this could have been outside the rest of the story progression as we don’t see her travel time etc... so, do we assume a few weeks? Do we assume months? Is this established?)

Battlefront 2 has the time covered from starkiller base firing back to the evacuation of the rebel base in TFA.

And it seems that basically there are just minutes or hours at best. As seen in the cutscene above, starting 17:21. Obviously Battlefront 2 spoilers in the video. Explains btw why the resistance has the plans to all first order ships.

12 hours ago, Khazadune said:

1) When did the FO openly engage in hostilities for the first time where the universe became aware of them?

The Poe Dameron comics give the impression, that the Resistance (in fact Poe and his squadron) are the ones openly engaging the FO in combat - against standing orders. But the first major strike is indeed the attack on Hosnian Prime. Blitzkrieg comes to mind ...