So in early days of SW:A i heard comments like "Yeah, but it can't take a Victory head on." Now I hear "Yeah, but it can't take an ISD head on."

I never thought much about this comparison, then it hit me today.

If you are taking any SD head on, I think you screwed up somewhere along the way.

Just a thought.

Astute conclusion my good sir! Indubitably. Haha

Yes nose to nose with a SD is a bad idea... Unless it's a Starhawk I think.

16 hours ago, Rune Taq said:

Unless it's a Starhawk I think.

I would say even then, Still not a good idea

Don't tell me what my kink is.

I ship starhawk SSD

I've seen the Mc75 and the Mc80 do it. Not often, but it has happened.

4 minutes ago, EchoZero said:

I've seen the Mc75 and the Mc80 do it. Not often, but it has happened.

Definitely possible. (Nice gif.)

I think the part I find funny is that a standard "is it good" test has become "can it take an ISD head on?"

As a fan of the series I think the answer should almost always be "no."

From the side? Sure.

From the aft? You bet.

Head on front arc all turbo lasers swinging? *funeral dirge plays*

I don't think I would have started using this as a pass/fail for quality of ships as a whole.

Maybe durability.

I guess there's always this maneuver though.

16 minutes ago, legofiddl3 said:

I guess there's always this maneuver though.

God I hope so.

19 minutes ago, EchoZero said:

God I hope so.

If they ever come out with the Raddus I really hope this is a thing somehow.

That scene was so awesome. I really wish the lead up to it was better.

I can’t see how hyperspace ramming would be a healthy game mechanic.

53 minutes ago, Belisarius09 said:

I can’t see how hyperspace ramming would be a healthy game mechanic.

Eh, just tie it to having 0 command dials somehow, with no shields and 1 hull remaining, no friendly ships left, and while it destroys several enemy ships only reduces the enemy flagship to half its current health when it destroys your ship, so you end up tabled and "technically lose the battle". You can totally have that commander, I won't object.

On 9/25/2019 at 7:57 PM, Rune Taq said:

Yes nose to nose with a SD is a bad idea... Unless it's a Starhawk I think.

I don't think the Star Destroyers were priced with the idea that the front arc was unusable?

IE., I don't think that complaint is with a ship that can't close to point-blank in a Star Destroyer's front arc and slug it out hit-for-hit until someone dies. Clearly that's stupid, nobody would do that or think that's required.

Rather, I think the complaint speaks more to the difficulty of surviving the occasional glance through that arc...or difficulty facing an ISD generally. That is...a ship good against MSU lists, but if it faces an ISD...can't quite get the density of hits in to really hurt it. Or something vapor-thin when it gets in its own combat range that even passing through an ISD's front arc if thinking of combat is a death sentence (thinking of Raiders, specifically, here).

When someone says they have a decent list "but it can't take an ISD head-on" (or SSD, now it's come to it), I don't read that as their desire for a slow-paced-slugging-match-to-the-death which they'd obviously lose, so much as 'I don't have a solution at all for a list focused around that ship, nothing I do can fight that effectively'.

There’s an excellent theory that the hyperspace ram was only possible because it utilized the lock the First Order’s hyperspace tracking system had on the Raddus.

Considering they’ll likely never depict that maneuver again, that’s the explanation I’m going with.

Visually stunning on screen but not so much on the table...

13 hours ago, Belisarius09 said:

I can’t see how hyperspace ramming would be a healthy game mechanic.

agreed, still, it's fun to think about. lol

1 hour ago, Forresto said:

There’s an excellent theory that the hyperspace ram was only possible because it utilized the lock the First Order’s hyperspace tracking system had on the Raddus.

Unfortunately, I think I can debunk this with the info from the novelization. The tracker didn't necessarily "lock on" to the ship. It tracked it's direction and hyperspace entry coordinates, then used 5,000 years of hyper space travel data from the Old Republic, Jedi, separatists, empire, rebellion, and New Republic to narrow down the exit coordinates. What made the tracker unique was the amount of time they did it in. Even a super computer would take an exceedingly long amount of time to process data like that. Hux designed a device that put the tracking computer into a hyperspace field. As it turns out the time flow is different in hyperspace, essentially, what would take months only took moments. (Enter why Snoke kept Hux in a place of power even though he couldn't lead to save his life.)

19 minutes ago, EchoZero said:

agreed, still, it's fun to think about. lol

Unfortunately, I think I can debunk this with the info from the novelization. The tracker didn't necessarily "lock on" to the ship. It tracked it's direction and hyperspace entry coordinates, then used 5,000 years of hyper space travel data from the Old Republic, Jedi, separatists, empire, rebellion, and New Republic to narrow down the exit coordinates. What made the tracker unique was the amount of time they did it in. Even a super computer would take an exceedingly long amount of time to process data like that. Hux designed a device that put the tracking computer into a hyperspace field. As it turns out the time flow is different in hyperspace, essentially, what would take months only took moments. (Enter why Snoke kept Hux in a place of power even though he couldn't lead to save his life.)

I would only counter that the explanation is in the novelization, which aren’t really canon.

For instance The Force Awakens novelization has an all out resistance ground assault on Starkiller Base that never happened.

I do think they’re going to mention a brief explanation of how it worked in The Rise of Skywalker. Afterall it was the biggest complaint many had of The Last Jedi and it seems like a good tactic to use in a “backed in a corner” scenario, which the Resistance always are in.

6 minutes ago, Forresto said:

I would only counter that the explanation is in the novelization, which aren’t really canon.

For instance The Force Awakens novelization has an all out resistance ground assault on Starkiller Base that never happened.

I do think they’re going to mention a brief explanation of how it worked in The Rise of Skywalker. Afterall it was the biggest complaint many had of The Last Jedi and it seems like a good tactic to use in a “backed in a corner” scenario, which the Resistance always are in.

Okay, so I had to do some research, but according to Del Rey, the novelizations are canon anywhere that isn't directly contradicted by the movie.

So, canon, for now? lol

Which cheers me up, cause that means TLJ's novelization explaining how Rey got her skills is also in the "true for now" category.

3 hours ago, EchoZero said:

Unfortunately, I think I can debunk this with the info from the novelization. The tracker didn't necessarily "lock on" to the ship. It tracked it's direction and hyperspace entry coordinates, then used 5,000 years of hyper space travel data from the Old Republic, Jedi, separatists, empire, rebellion, and New Republic to narrow down the exit coordinates. What made the tracker unique was the amount of time they did it in. Even a super computer would take an exceedingly long amount of time to process data like that. Hux designed a device that put the tracking computer into a hyperspace field. As it turns out the time flow is different in hyperspace, essentially, what would take months only took moments. (Enter why Snoke kept Hux in a place of power even though he couldn't lead to save his life.)

Actually, that allows for an even better explanation, though.

Ships can't collide with other things that are entirely in 'real space'. But part of the Supremacy (Hux's tracking computer) was apparently half in hyperspace and half in 'real space'. That's the only thing that made it possible to collide with a ship in hyperspace - that part of the ship was already there!

😜

(How did Admiral Holdo know about it? Probably she didn't, specifically - she just saw an unusual hyperspace reading from the First Order ship and realized it could be used for that purpose.)

3 hours ago, xanderf said:

Actually, that allows for an even better explanation, though.

Ships can't collide with other things that are entirely in 'real space'. But part of the Supremacy (Hux's tracking computer) was apparently half in hyperspace and half in 'real space'. That's the only thing that made it possible to collide with a ship in hyperspace - that part of the ship was already there!

😜

(How did Admiral Holdo know about it? Probably she didn't, specifically - she just saw an unusual hyperspace reading from the First Order ship and realized it could be used for that purpose.)

No, no, no. Collisions like that can happen, they’re just real unlikely and you try to astrogate well to minimize the chances that they might happen...

But when Holdo realized that her sacrifice of staying behind wasn’t going to save the others after all, she decided to go ahead and hyperspace outta there, live to fight another day... and just got very unlucky.

10 hours ago, Tayloraj100 said:

But when Holdo realized that her sacrifice of staying behind wasn’t going to save the others after all, she decided to go ahead and hyperspace outta there, live to fight another day... and just got very unlucky.

But if that where the case then why turn the ship toward the first order fleet to escape?

16 minutes ago, XR8rGREAT said:

But if that where the case then why turn the ship toward the first order fleet to escape?

They were headed towards the rest of the Resistance. If she were to shoot past them the other way, they’d have to turn the whole fleet around to follow, which they weren’t going to bother with anyway.

Yup, hyperspace ram was pure accident. She was trying to cut and run.

If that were an actual way to collide with ships, considering how devastating it was, there would be drone weapons designed to do that all the time.

2 hours ago, Tayloraj100 said:

They were headed towards the rest of the Resistance. If she were to shoot past them the other way, they’d have to turn the whole fleet around to follow, which they weren’t going to bother with anyway.

Yup, hyperspace ram was pure accident. She was trying to cut and run.

This sounds more like theory to discredit Holdo

17 minutes ago, n815e said:

If that were an actual way to collide with ships, considering how devastating it was, there would be drone weapons designed to do that all the time.

My thought is that it is kinda like a nuke. If you start using them all the time, the collateral isnt worth the results.

15 hours ago, xanderf said:

Actually, that allows for an even better explanation, though.

Ships can't collide with other things that are entirely in 'real space'. But part of the Supremacy (Hux's tracking computer) was apparently half in hyperspace and half in 'real space'. That's the only thing that made it possible to collide with a ship in hyperspace - that part of the ship was already there!

😜

(How did Admiral Holdo know about it? Probably she didn't, specifically - she just saw an unusual hyperspace reading from the First Order ship and realized it could be used for that purpose.)

I think the issue with this theory is that she was accelerating to hyperspace, she wasnt traveling in hyperspace. So the collision occured in real space at near light speed.

If you watch ships in the series jump to hyperspace, they have a short real space blur as they accelerate before actually entering hyperspace.

I think Holdo just set a collision course and accelerates, knowing there wasn't room to actually reach hyperspace.

Am I the only one who thinks a conventional ramming attack would have been enough of a cinematic moment for the movie? A Mon Cal battlecruiser could have closed the distance with their amazing redundant shield generators, and there wouldn't have been any lore ramifications for fans to debate endlessly. Granted I personally had problems with other parts of the Last Jedi, but removing hyperspace ramming from the movie would have improved it a bit for me.

1 hour ago, Piratical Moustache said:

there wouldn't have been any lore ram ifications

I see what you did there 😜

I suggest you guys go onto YouTube and look up a video on the channel EchartsLadder. He talks about the real science behind how such a small ship could do damage like that. It’s worth a watch. The break down from what I remember is the ship had to be traveling basically an exact speed (pre-hyperspace) that compresses it’s mass enough to punch through the Space Boomerang and send shrapnel to the others.

so my idea of what happened is ol’ Purple hair knew the odds and mentally said “don’t ever tell me the odds!” Made the jump, with the intention of not actually entering hyperspace, colliding with Snoke and damaging/destroying it. Very much all based on hope. And by the force, luck, or whatever granted it so, she pulled it off perfectly. An impossibility hard thing to do (why it isn’t done more, I.e. space nukes) that we will never see again.

On 9/25/2019 at 5:28 PM, legofiddl3 said:

If you are taking any SD head on, I think you screwed up somewhere along the way.

Not true, it's all about context.

A lot of times, if you don't take an ISD head on, but try to flank or chase it, once it is sufficiently damaged it can just Speed 3 away from danger for the last few rounds, and even if you've put 10 damage cards on it, it's worth no points, so every die you threw at it was a total waste.

To that end, taking an ISD head on is one of the few ways to kill it with ships, especially if you need to block it to prevent it from moving away.


I won a lot of tournaments a couple years ago taking ISDs head on with an Landominition (Admonition MC30 + Lando). Backed by Reikaan, Lando could reliably kill an ISD head-on, and sometimes the Admo would even survive the exchange. Either way, it was a net gain in points. MC75s can similarly do something similar, but it's a bigger points risk.

Also, if it's Imp vs Imp, it pretty much necessitates head-on conflicts between ISDs, and I'm pretty sure an SSD can take an ISD head on (but I've never seen one on table). Like, a Kuat ISD Avenger with Expanded Launchers and some offensive mods desperately wants to go head-on with any other ISD out there.



So, like everything, context is everything. But I certainly enjoyed stomping overconfident Imp players who thought nothing could beat their ISDs head on and would just fly right into the teeth of my little Admonition ... 🤣 🤣