Yes, my point was about the expense and ubiquity. Certainly during Imperial times it would have been more difficult, but not to the extent the old WEG sourcebooks portrayed. It would have been the backbone of commerce, just as it is in the real world, but something the WEG writers would never have foreseen.

The WEG writers have corporations (as well as universities and other organizations) using FTL communications regularly. Under the rule of the Empire, they pay for time on the HoloNet and/or cheaper options depending on need. However, Star Wars does NOT have online commerce like we do today. You don't sit on Tatooine and place an order through Amazon Galactic and have your product delivered to your doorstep from a warehouse in Ord Mantell, you can't do comparative shopping across the various galactic marketplaces, and you don't have the option of getting customer service on the line whenever you want.

Thank you all. I will make the HoloNet (and all galactic communication) owned, restricted and watched by the empire. Official trade communication will be very expensive, so that no one will just order his Thermal Detonator "online". There will "shadownets" used by Black Sun and the Hutt Syndicate, but without the proper contacts and money it won't be possible to just call somebody on the other end of the galaxy. Palpatine probably wanted to isolate the planets to reduce opposition and monitor any rebel communications.

Sorry for interrupting this thread with something non-relevant, but I had to comment on this:

PEDANT

Nitpick: Intergalactic refers to the space between galaxies, therefore, no intergalactic communication exists in Star Wars, as it all occurs in one galaxy.

END PEDANT

Anti-nitpick: You're wrong, "intergalactic" refers to within one galaxy. You're thinking of the term "extragalactic".

Sorry for interrupting this thread with something non-relevant, but I had to comment on this:

PEDANT

Nitpick: Intergalactic refers to the space between galaxies, therefore, no intergalactic communication exists in Star Wars, as it all occurs in one galaxy.

END PEDANT

Anti-nitpick: You're wrong, "intergalactic" refers to within one galaxy. You're thinking of the term "extragalactic".

Close, but not quite.

Intergalactic

Close, but not quite.

Intergalactic

1: situated in or relating to the spaces between galaxies

2: of, relating to, or occurring in outer space <intergalactic battles>

Also, Merriam Webster is the only dictionary I can find that even lists the second definition, as scientifically, intergalactic refers to the first one only. (oxford dictionary, cambridge dictionary, freedictionary, dictionary.com, dictionary.reference.com, etc. all only list the first definition.)

Hence:

Interplanetary travel: between planets in the same solar system

Interstellar travel: between stars in the same galaxy

Intergalactic travel: between two galaxies in the universe.

Yes, my point was about the expense and ubiquity. Certainly during Imperial times it would have been more difficult, but not to the extent the old WEG sourcebooks portrayed.

The Empire are the kind of guys who blow up planets for kicks. As a totalitarian dictatorship, acting like Oceana from 1984 and attempting to root out thoughtcrime is what they do.

And indeed the WEG guys, or Lucas himself, probably didn't grasp just how ubiquitous and just darn useful the internet would turn out to be, but the Empire cutting access to the Holonet is old fluff, and since it is the sort of thing bad guys do and dovetails nicely with how long distance communication is treated in the OT as compared to the PT, I think it works rather well.

--

I would suggest trying to impress upon the players that given the effort it takes to get on the Holonet, when a crime boss calls you in person on a real time two way holo connection from half a galaxy away in order to tell you off he is probably very, very displeased indeed.

I would suggest trying to impress upon the players that given the effort it takes to get on the Holonet, when a crime boss calls you in person on a real time two way holo connection from half a galaxy away in order to tell you off he is probably very, very displeased indeed.

At the same time, it at least signals he doesn't want you dead yet! I mean, it would probably have been cheaper and less trouble for him to hire a bounty hunter to "acquire" you.

I would suggest trying to impress upon the players that given the effort it takes to get on the Holonet, when a crime boss calls you in person on a real time two way holo connection from half a galaxy away in order to tell you off he is probably very, very displeased indeed.

At the same time, it at least signals he doesn't want you dead yet! I mean, it would probably have been cheaper and less trouble for him to hire a bounty hunter to "acquire" you.

And it could be worse than him merely hiring a bounty hunter.

However, Star Wars does NOT have online commerce like we do today. You don't sit on Tatooine and place an order through Amazon Galactic and have your product delivered to your doorstep from a warehouse in Ord Mantell, you can't do comparative shopping across the various galactic marketplaces, and you don't have the option of getting customer service on the line whenever you want.

Sez who? Okay, your extreme example aside, I get your point. And I haven't been very clear: I do accept that under the Empire there are considerable restrictions...real world model being China. I just don't see the point in sticking with WEG's limited view. Those promoting it are taking an inflexible "this is the way it is, love it or leave it" stance, as if all SW development stopped 20 years ago.

The WEG view is poor economics for one, borne of a lack of understanding of how important communications become once they're developed. If the Empire is too restrictive with legitimate communication, people will find a way around it.

For another, it's obvious that the creators of Star Wars content are happy to incorporate more recent real-world developments to flesh out their universe. The upcoming Star Wars Rebels show might delve more into this, and you may end up being right, but until then...

And for a third...we're not in WEG anymore, the game is called Edge of the Empire. Who knows how they're going to treat this topic?

Sorry for interrupting this thread with something non-relevant, but I had to comment on this:

PEDANT

Nitpick: Intergalactic refers to the space between galaxies, therefore, no intergalactic communication exists in Star Wars, as it all occurs in one galaxy.

END PEDANT

Anti-nitpick: You're wrong, "intergalactic" refers to within one galaxy. You're thinking of the term "extragalactic".

No, you're thinking of "intragalactic", within a single galaxy. The prefix "inter-" means "between".

If the Empire is too restrictive with legitimate communication, people will find a way around it.

Thats kinda what all the messing around with the Rebel Alliance is. That the Empire tanked the economy and plunged the galaxy in to an unprecedented depression by turning off the internet in an attempt to suppress dissent to their twisted ideology is one of many reasons the beings of the galaxy took up arms to free themselves from the tyranny of the Emperors New Order.

I'd have said that issues of net freedom are pretty current.

And now I get to be :|, because I was wrong. Not about the definition of intergalactic, but about the fact that it all happens in one Galaxy.

The Rishi Maze is a dwarf satellite galaxy and is the location of the planets Rishi and Kamino.

Firefist is a second dwarf satellite galaxy and is where several species originate (the Tof, the Nagai, and a few others.)

However, Star Wars does NOT have online commerce like we do today. You don't sit on Tatooine and place an order through Amazon Galactic and have your product delivered to your doorstep from a warehouse in Ord Mantell, you can't do comparative shopping across the various galactic marketplaces, and you don't have the option of getting customer service on the line whenever you want.

Sez who? Okay, your extreme example aside, I get your point. And I haven't been very clear: I do accept that under the Empire there are considerable restrictions...real world model being China. I just don't see the point in sticking with WEG's limited view. Those promoting it are taking an inflexible "this is the way it is, love it or leave it" stance, as if all SW development stopped 20 years ago.

The WEG view is poor economics for one, borne of a lack of understanding of how important communications become once they're developed. If the Empire is too restrictive with legitimate communication, people will find a way around it.

For another, it's obvious that the creators of Star Wars content are happy to incorporate more recent real-world developments to flesh out their universe. The upcoming Star Wars Rebels show might delve more into this, and you may end up being right, but until then...

And for a third...we're not in WEG anymore, the game is called Edge of the Empire. Who knows how they're going to treat this topic?

Well put. Though don't be surprised if HappyDaze adds you to his ignore list for having the temerity to point out his hypocrisy on what should and should not be changed from the WEG days of doing things

Like you said, a lot of the assumptions that WEG made about the Star Wars universe are pretty outdated due to the EU having adapted and changed to reflect technological developments in our own world. Back when the Original Trilogy was filmed, the notion of a small, easily portable communications device was pretty novel (the first "portable phones" were giant bricks after all) and a computer that could easily be held in your hand was also a "way out there" notion at that time, yet tablets (what a datapad essentially is) are fairly common in today's world, even if they're just e-readers like the Kindle or Nook.

I think your example of China and it's restrictions are a pretty good parallel of how the Empire seeks to restrict high-speed communications. It can still be used by the civilian populace during the Galactic Civil War, but they're likely stuck to low-bandwidth transmission speeds while the Imperial government & military get access to the high-speed transmissions via the Holonet; likely akin to priority communication channels for real-time conversations where everyone else is limited to the equivalent of a message board.

While TCW accounts for a more modern take on various technologies, there's also the matter of the Republic being far more open and unrestricted about who could use it. Shmi probably didn't because she's stuck on Tatooine, where "the Republic doesn't exist" as that's considered a part of Hutt Space at the time of the prequels. It'd likely be akin to a person in a Third World nation not being able to access the internet in today's world, something those of us who live in a First World nation tend to take for granted. Someone on Coruscant prior to the Clone Wars and the Galactic Empire could probably just walk into a cafe and benefit from the Star Wars equivalent of free Wi-Fi, while during the Clone Wars and up to the fall of the Empire, such things likely became far more restricted in the "interest of security."

Now I'm not saying that WEG's material should be thrown out bathwater and all, but I do think there's plenty of room for FFG to do their own thing and to update certain aspects of the Star Wars 'verse rather than leaving it locked in 20th century equivalents.

Now I'm not saying that WEG's material should be thrown out bathwater and all, but I do think there's plenty of room for FFG to do their own thing and to update certain aspects of the Star Wars 'verse rather than leaving it locked in 20th century equivalents.

I'm going to go ahead and throw in my own 2 credits worth of caution on that statement. They need to be careful, when 'updating' tech to 'modern' standards. Much of what is currently cheap consumer electronics, was pie-in-the-sky military research, or even thought of as science-fiction when Star Wars was created.

The basic question to keep in mind is generally this: "If this technology existed in Star Wars, why didn't the Empire use it to track and destroy the droids, or the Falcon, or the Rebellion?", and the counter-point: "If this technology existed in Star Wars, why didn't the Rebellion use it against the Empire?"

An example from several games I've played in:

Modern soldiers have the potential to carry systems which can be used to track their location. If stormtroopers have these, then why didn't the Empire notice that some of their stormtroopers weren't at their duty stations, and were, in fact, roaming around the Death Star in places they had no business going?

These updates can be subtle, but if you keep extrapolating up to modern consumer electronics, and creating a Star Wars equivalent, then you can quickly end up in a situation where your Star Wars game more closely resembles a Star Trek episode, where Technology X (never seen in the movies) saves the day once again.

I'm certainly not saying to *never* do those updates. I'm just pointing out that you have to be careful what you add, and keep an eye out for how significantly something that seems minor can snowball.

In Star Wars, hyperspace communication is handled by way of the HoloNet, which routes signals across a network of hyperwave transcievers embedded in hyperspace, and satellites in orbit around planets. After it's inception, the Empire seizes and nationalizes the entire HoloNet, reserving it for official and approved traffic only, even shutting down sections of the network to intentionally hinder unapproved communication. In practice, the network is essentially reserved for use by the Imperial military, especially the Navy. <snip/>

You're speaking with a lot of authority here, so I'm wondering what your source is. If it's some pre-internet WEG product, I'd be inclined to ignore it.

My primary source was memory, supplemented by the Wookiepedia entry on the HoloNet which, in turn, references a number of sources ranging from RPG source books (both WEG & d20, but mostly d20), to books from the 'The Essential ...' series.

Aside from that source, though, what evidence do we see in the Original Trilogy of anyone *other* than the Empire making use of the HoloNet? It appears to be much more open and more commonly used in the pre-Imperial era, but there's no evidence that the Rebellion, or much of *anyone* aside from the Empire's military having access to the network.

Hyperspace communication is hindered in exactly the same way that tracking ships through hyperspace is hindered. Once a ship has *entered* hyperspace, it cannot be tracked by normal means. This results in HoloNet transmissions being done point-to-point across the network. If you don't know what route a ship is taking through hyperspace, you cannot route a signal for them to receive. For a military with a secure network infrastructure, this is not a hindrance. For people without access to that secure infrastructure, that's a whole different bucket of kibble.

An example from several games I've played in:

Modern soldiers have the potential to carry systems which can be used to track their location. If stormtroopers have these, then why didn't the Empire notice that some of their stormtroopers weren't at their duty stations, and were, in fact, roaming around the Death Star in places they had no business going?

In that particularly instance, given how many stormtroopers were on board the Death Star, it'd be akin to picking out a specific ant in a colony the size of your typical backyard.

And besides, it was only after the alarm was raised during the botched prison break that the Imperials on duty would be actively looking for an "rogue blips," by which point they had ditched the armor. Before hand, no alarm had been sounded, and likely by the time the stormtroopers investigating that control room that Artoo and Threepio were in, Luke, Han, and Chewie were about to engage in some thrilling heroics and blow the whole "sneaking around" thing to bits. Though it might even be that a general "heads-up" alert had gone out by the time they showed up, which was why the Imperial officer in charge was suspicious of the "prisoner transfer" or why Han's bluff failed so badly.

Plus, they'd have needed to know exactly which troopers were where, and the duty rosters to ensure they didn't ping a trooper that was currently off-shift or just taking a visit to the refresher. Particularly if the trooper in question was hanging out with a couple off-duty buddies in a different section that was far away from his usual post. And unless the Imp doing the search knew exactly which troopers had their armor stolen, it'd take time to narrow down the list out of hundreds of thousands of individual stormtroopers. Hollywood might think otherwise in some films, but that sort of data sifting takes time, especially when you're not 100% certain what you're looking for in the first place.

I see your point, but it can cut both ways.

If the Empire is too restrictive with legitimate communication, people will find a way around it.

Thats kinda what all the messing around with the Rebel Alliance is. That the Empire tanked the economy and plunged the galaxy in to an unprecedented depression by turning off the internet in an attempt to suppress dissent to their twisted ideology is one of many reasons the beings of the galaxy took up arms to free themselves from the tyranny of the Emperors New Order.

I'd have said that issues of net freedom are pretty current.

Yep. We have several recent examples of countries killing all access to the Internet in an attempt to quash dissent. Some were more successful than others. Early on, the work-arounds were as easy as calling a neighboring nation from your cell phone. More recently, we've seen top-tier news orgs get caught in the shutdowns to the point where they have to resort to 'discrete courier services' to get their tapes somewhere outside of the blackout zone, with even their satellite up-links being blocked.

The HoloNet appears to work, at a physical infrastructure level, very much like a star-topology network utilizing highly focused point-to-point transceivers as the transmission medium. This makes them more similar to a wired ethernet network than a public wi-fi access point. If you can't gain physical access to a port on a wired ethernet network, you aren't going to be able to use that network. If you can't gain equivalent access to some HoloNet node, you're not going to be able to use the HoloNet.

Heck, that's an idea for just the sort of job that a Hutt might hire your crew to deal with. "I need you to access this Hyperwave transceiver station, subvert it's security systems, and hide this secret access point. If you don't, I'll just go ahead and claim your ship in exchange for most of what you owe me on it."

Shmi probably didn't because she's stuck on Tatooine, where "the Republic doesn't exist" as that's considered a part of Hutt Space at the time of the prequels.

There's also the small matter of the Jedi not allowing it.

Aside from that source, though, what evidence do we see in the Original Trilogy of anyone *other* than the Empire making use of the HoloNet?

That's an absence of evidence problem. We hardly see any "normal" people at all in the OT, after leaving the moisture farm; there's a little more in the PT, but not much. In contrast, TCW gives quite a bit of screen time to average people and the places they live, far more than the movies and and other SW products. It's a far richer, complex, and varied vision. Yes, it's during the Republic days, but the overtones of decay and restriction are readily apparent, you can see the direction it's going and project from there.

Shmi probably didn't because she's stuck on Tatooine, where "the Republic doesn't exist" as that's considered a part of Hutt Space at the time of the prequels.

There's also the small matter of the Jedi not allowing it.

Aside from that source, though, what evidence do we see in the Original Trilogy of anyone *other* than the Empire making use of the HoloNet?

That's an absence of evidence problem. We hardly see any "normal" people at all in the OT, after leaving the moisture farm; there's a little more in the PT, but not much. In contrast, TCW gives quite a bit of screen time to average people and the places they live, far more than the movies and and other SW products. It's a far richer, complex, and varied vision. Yes, it's during the Republic days, but the overtones of decay and restriction are readily apparent, you can see the direction it's going and project from there.

There is also the videogames and comics and books, all of which use "Holonet" type communication and infact in Knights of the Old Republic its used all the time, between almost every mission and in the Old Republic MMO you use it all the time too, if you're in a group mission and one person is at a story location and you're father away, bame, holonet communication. It's the same in the other games too.

Shmi probably didn't because she's stuck on Tatooine, where "the Republic doesn't exist" as that's considered a part of Hutt Space at the time of the prequels.

There's also the small matter of the Jedi not allowing it.

Aside from that source, though, what evidence do we see in the Original Trilogy of anyone *other* than the Empire making use of the HoloNet?

That's an absence of evidence problem. We hardly see any "normal" people at all in the OT, after leaving the moisture farm; there's a little more in the PT, but not much. In contrast, TCW gives quite a bit of screen time to average people and the places they live, far more than the movies and and other SW products. It's a far richer, complex, and varied vision. Yes, it's during the Republic days, but the overtones of decay and restriction are readily apparent, you can see the direction it's going and project from there.

There is also the videogames and comics and books, all of which use "Holonet" type communication and infact in Knights of the Old Republic its used all the time, between almost every mission and in the Old Republic MMO you use it all the time too, if you're in a group mission and one person is at a story location and you're father away, bame, holonet communication. It's the same in the other games too.

Except that all of the KotOR and TOR MMO stuff can be safely ignored, since it is 3000 years prior to the Rebellion Era. The other games generally show criminal organisations and the Rebellion having their own, rather more limited, FTL comms systems.

There is also the videogames and comics and books, all of which use "Holonet" type communication and infact in Knights of the Old Republic its used all the time, between almost every mission and in the Old Republic MMO you use it all the time too, if you're in a group mission and one person is at a story location and you're father away, bame, holonet communication. It's the same in the other games too.

Well, for the video games, it's a matter of convenience for the players rather than a true "state of affairs" for that time period. Video games rarely bother with "realism" and instead focus on providing a satisfying and enjoyable gaming experience. It's quite possible that HoloNet communications weren't readily available to most folks during those time frames, but the PCs have access to it simply because it keeps things moving in the game.