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Well probably because if you keep throwing away you hyperdrives and space ships you'll run out of ships.

There's also the issue of the Empire having far more resources to work with, they can afford to lose quite a lot of capital ships and still build more to replace them. For the Rebels every ship is important. Why throw away a ship to take out one enemy ship when that ship might combine with others to take out multiple enemy ships.

There's also the fact that the Empire has put its stock into larger craft rather than fighter craft; if the Empire started losing large ships en-mass the Rebels would lose their fighter advantage as you'd expect to see the Empire put more and more resources into better fighters - we actually see this in Return of the Jedi with the interceptor class tie-fighters.

 Flinty wrote:
So if it's a canon manoeuvr that is well known in the background, why hasn't it been weaponized? If all you need to do is strap a guidance module to a hyper drive to make the ultimate capital ship killer missile, it rather invalidates the usefulness of capital ships.

Because, presumably, its a function of the hyperspace projectiles mass. Again, all the above examples of hyperspace rams are ships 3-4km long, you're probably not going to kill a capital ship with something smaller. Then on top of that theres the whole aiming bit. Its a lot easier to hit a planet (most of the examples we have) than it is a capital ship - the capital ship in question just happened to be particularly large. Its presumably a factor of mass shadows, if it has enough mass to create one in hyperspace then it can presumably be hit - it would seem that smaller vessels (by which I mean anything smaller than say an Executor-class SSD) do not have sufficient mass to create a mass shadow and thus cannot be hit.

You also have to hit the target in question - most of the examples we have are of objects hitting planets, planets are pretty big, even the Death Stars are tiny by comparison (as is Star Killer base), though it would probably qualify as a small planetoid). Most of the impacts occur during hyperphase transit, we have one example of a collision when an object exits hyperspace (three 1.6km long star destroyers hit the executor, the executor survives without damage because of its shields), and in the case of Holdo the collision occured while accelerating into hyperspace. In the case of those first two examples, it would be really hard to weaponize it against vessels, because you would have to enter hyperspace from lightyears away and would essentially be flying blind with regards to their position - while you're in hyperspace you have no means of detecting or tracking their position in the real world (and their mass shadows are irrelevant in size anyway). The only reason the Executor was hit was because it was accidentally hanging out at the exact coordinates that the ISDs were jumping to .You might be able to hit something like the Death Star provided you know its position and it doesn't move, but given that it seems to spend most of its time in orbit around a planet you're going to have a tough time hitting the station instead of the planet.

The reason Holdo could hit the Supremacy was because she jumped into it from however many dozens of km away (and even then the chance of a successful hit was said to be 1 in 1 million). In practical terms, this would be useless, because you would have to bring your km long hyperspace projectile onto the battlefield with you, hope it doesn't get destroyed by enemy fire in the process of aiming it, and then hope that your well aimed shot succeeds in its .000001% probability of hitting its target.

Theres just nothing simple or practical about it.

The problem with declaring Hyperspace ramming as a one in a million shot is it was done a second time in RoS, with devastating visual effects able to be seen from the surface of a world. Its clearly something that can be done, multiple times, with much higher probability. Functionally speaking as well, the SW universe does have accurate tracking information for ships to be able to safely jump into hyperspace, which means you can still make it more precise to hit a target with a near instantaneous projectile.

It's just bad writing without thought to logical consequences. This is why Star Wars, Star Trek and 40k aren't hard sci-fi, because hard sci fi is all about logical consequences of fictional tech.

 Jadenim wrote:
Real world kamikaze attacks are very effective, but not often used due to a) they’re actually very costly in terms of material for that effectiveness and b) you have to have people willing to commit suicide. I never understood the big controversy around that scene, I always took it as just difficult to achieve and only effective in certain situations (I.e. no other option). I think the arrogance of the First Order also contributes to it’s success, by getting to point blank range in close formation, making themselves much easier to hit.

In real life we build missiles—kamikaze aircraft without pilots that are actually cost effective. In ESB, we saw the Empire use hundreds (probably more like millions) of disposable, pilotless hyper drives to deliver probe droids. Hyper-ram missiles should be standard equipment if price were the reason fleets refused to use hyperramming against hard targets.

For F’s sake, the Death Star would have been the one scenario that would justify kamikazeing a whole fleet, and they didn’t even try it once. Either everyone in the OT is unbelievable stupid, or TLJ’s one use of this tactic is bs. I know which explanation I prefer.

Mass is easy. Strap.a hyperdrive to an asteroid. If Thrawn can use asteroids and cloaking devices to besiege Coruscant, then they should be easily used as pre existing mass for ship killer missiles. And for a military engagement, you dont need to blow something up entirely to.make it combat ineffective.

Given that you can apparently find a perfectly usable.hyperdrive for quite a large ship in a scrap.yard in the arsiest end of beyond, the propulsion would appear not to be the bottleneck.

Guidance wise, droids or even suicide.pilots would work just as well. Clones bred solely for the purpose.

 AegisFate wrote:
The problem with declaring Hyperspace ramming as a one in a million shot is it was done a second time in RoS, with devastating visual effects able to be seen from the surface of a world. Its clearly something that can be done, multiple times, with much higher probability. Functionally speaking as well, the SW universe does have accurate tracking information for ships to be able to safely jump into hyperspace, which means you can still make it more precise to hit a target with a near instantaneous projectile.

Its pure fan conjecture that it was a holdo maneuver shot over Endor. Give it a couple years and there will no doubt be an alternative canon explanation of what cut that star destroyer in half.

In real life we build missiles—kamikaze aircraft without pilots that are actually cost effective. In ESB, we saw the Empire use hundreds (probably more like millions) of disposable, pilotless hyper drives to deliver probe droids. Hyper-ram missiles should be standard equipment if price were the reason fleets refused to use hyperramming against hard targets.

I mean, in real life kamikaze aircraft really weren't all that effective a weapon system. Their psychological impact was more severe than the physical impact. Japanese claims would have you indicate that the damage done to US Naval vessels was catastrophic and responsible for like 80% of US wartime naval losses in the pacific or something. "Officially", according to the US military, "approximately 2,800 Kamikaze attackers sank 34 Navy ships, damaged 368 others, killed 4,900 sailors, and wounded over 4,800. Despite radar detection and cuing, airborne interception, attrition, and massive anti-aircraft barrages, 14 percent of Kamikazes survived to score a hit on a ship; nearly 8.5 percent of all ships hit by Kamikazes sank." With regards to that last sentence its important to understand that just because a ship was sunk after being hit by a kamikaze attack, doesn't mean that the ship sunk *because* of the kamikaze attack.This data doesn't include the kamikaze attacks that failed to reach targets or which were utilized against other targets - in total Japan lost 3,912 kamikaze pilots and aircraft in attack vs the 2800 that the US Navy recorded. By comparison, Japans conventional aerial attacks against US Navy vessels had a much better ratio in Japans favor than the kamikaze attacks did.

As for hyperspace missiles - the Galaxy Gun (amongst others) exists - but the warheads they packed were apparently much more damaging than what they could achieve by just ramming the planet, as they were capable of outright disintegrating the planet to its constituent molecules and thus dropped into realspace before collision.

For F’s sake, the Death Star would have been the one scenario that would justify kamikazeing a whole fleet, and they didn’t even try it once. Either everyone in the OT is unbelievable stupid, or TLJ’s one use of this tactic is bs. I know which explanation I prefer.

But the Rebellion apparently didn't have a whole fleet. In fact, Rogue One basically shows us that most of the Rebel fleet that existed at the time was captured or destroyed at Scarif just a few days before the Battle of Yavin. At this point you're looking for fictional problems that don't exist and ignoring the fictional realities that justify events happening the way they did.

Mass is easy. Strap.a hyperdrive to an asteroid. If Thrawn can use asteroids and cloaking devices to besiege Coruscant, then they should be easily used as pre existing mass for ship killer missiles. And for a military engagement, you dont need to blow something up entirely to.make it combat ineffective.

Given that you can apparently find a perfectly usable.hyperdrive for quite a large ship in a scrap.yard in the arsiest end of beyond, the propulsion would appear not to be the bottleneck.

The Naboo starship wasn't really all that large, being only about the size of the Falcon. Again, all the successful hyperspace rams out there involved a 3km+ long vessel, so its pretty clear that something the size of the Millennium Falcon probably wouldn't cut it. And your asteroid suggestion is cute, theres plenty of big 'uns out there that they could take advantage of - theres just one problem: you still need power to actually get the hyperdrive to do its thing. Its fair to assume that the power requirements, as well as the necessary size and cost of the hyperdrive, correlate directly to the mass of the object in question. So even strapping a hyperdrive and the necessary fusion powerplant to an asteroid is still going to be a pretty expensive operation.

Guidance wise, droids or even suicide.pilots would work just as well. Clones bred solely for the purpose.

Thats not how hyperspace works. You're not going to guide anything into any target at superluminal velocities. You're aiming at a fixed point in space before you even activate your hyperdrive, maybe accounting for orbital drift or other variations in movement, etc. and then hoping the object is still where you think it is when you get there. Unless you mean guidance as a battlefield weapon, in which case you still come into the problem that you've invested a lot of time, money, and resources to outfit an asteroid with a hyperdrive, powerplant, and guidance system in order to get you a .000001% probability of actually hitting a target while it jumps to lightspeed. Not really cost effective at all to say the least - and as we've established, its entirely possible that vessels below a certain mass threshold simply can't be hit in such a manner (i.e. your hyper-rock is useless against 99% of the warships in existence and is only really viable against targets in excess of an Executor-class in mass).

 Flinty wrote:
Mass is easy. Strap.a hyperdrive to an asteroid.

Not even that.

Just make a missile around the size of a regular fighter. Put a cheapo class 7-8 hyperdrive in it along with some method of triggering it remotely. Put a ton or so of iron in the nose as the "payload". Have some basic maneuvering thrusters. Now make a few hundred of them. When you attack something, all you gotta do is remotely pilot it till its pointing directly at a target and then activate the hyperdrive, using the thrusters to keep it aligned till the hyperdrive activates.

Even a poor quality hyperdrive is going to accelerate a 1 ton payload to devastating speed. Even if we say that a class 8 hyperdrive only comes out at 1/2 the speed of light, a 1 ton payload is still going to impart roughly 6,317,523,806,110 megajoules on impact.

Its certainly not the Raddus, but that is going to seriously damage anything it hits. And you've got plenty of them.

Given that space ships are about as common as pickup trucks, getting a bunch of throw away hyper drives would not be an issue.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Could hyperspace ramming do some damage? Sure. But would that damage be worth it? Probably not. The utility of an intact warship is clearly far greater - not just in the ability to transport troops, materiel, and starfighters, but also in its reusability. An Imperial Star Destroyer, about half the length of the Raddus (and thanks to the square cube law I would guess about a quarter of the mass), is capable of sterilizing an entire planet with its turbolasers (its called "base delta zero", its a sustainted planetary bombardment capable of turning the entirety of a worlds upper crust into molten slag). Thats one star destroyer able to do that - even assuming that an ISD was a suitably sized mass to be weaponized as a meaningful hyperspace ram (probably not) against a target - why would you want to? You can only pop a single target with it as a hyperspace ram, whereas if you just wanted to go around doing the whole base delta zero thing, that one ISD is good for how many planets and warships destroyed?

Even in Star Wars, E= MCsquared. Load a GR-75 with rocks and at lightspeed it'll have enough energy to melt the entire Death Star into slag.

 Vulcan wrote:
Even in Star Wars, E= MCsquared. Load a GR-75 with rocks and at lightspeed it'll have enough energy to melt the entire Death Star into slag.

Not quite, as if that was true FTL (at least how it is shown in Star Wars) would be impossible.

That's why most sci-fi settings have alternate universes or dimensions as shortcuts for FTL, because realspace FTL kinda breaks physics. And even with shortcuts, you run into the issue that FTL is time travel, but everyone ignores that (except the Xeeleeverse) so we can say that relativity (which includes E=MCsquared) isn't truly a thing in Star Wars, or most sci-fi settings for that matter.

BTW, a rock (or an hydrogen atom for that matter) at lightspeed wouldn't just melt the Death Star, it would break the universe*, because anything at lighspeed has infinite kinetic energy.

*If we want to be even more technical, the universe would still expand faster than the released energy (which is still shackled by lightspeed), so it wouldn't truly end the universe.

 Overread wrote:
Well probably because if you keep throwing away you hyperdrives and space ships you'll run out of ships.

In theory. In practice we've seen huge areas (and even entire planets) with junked ships. Scavenging crap is good enough for this kind of purpose, as long as it can go in a straight line and hit 'minimum' light speed in the weird star wars classification of hyperdrive ratings.

Even without that, the sheer number of ships wandering around the SW universe is astronomical in its own right. There doesn't seem to be an Unobtainium limit on cranking things out. Especially given the completely nonsense numbers of First Order ships (not to mention the ships that RoS simply handwaves into existence).

Hyperspeed had two explanations before Disneywars: Hyperspace is an alternate dimension (in which case hyperramming shouldn’t work) and, after Saxton’s canon ICS books, Hpwrspace as the tachyon of version of the universe, where mass is transformed into tachyonic mass (in which case hyperramming shouldn’t work).

Also, ignoring your huge block of text, if the Rebels had no fleet after Scarif (as opposed to having a dispersed fleet that couldn’t be Hosnian Primed), they sure manages to gather forces quickly, lending credence to the idea that hyper-capable ships are cheap and plentiful (which we knew). For all the words, they still boil down to an ineffectual attempt to argue away how hyperramming makes sense in a universe already established around a set of rules that exclude it.

We’ve never seen a hyperdrive set to “still” or destination=departure point, so if some wiseass put that in the next movie to, make the movie happen easier create a hyperspace shockwave that polarized the inverters and kept fleeing rebel fleets from escaping via hyperdrive, that would be cool? You wouldn’t have a problem bullshitting that into the setting like it wouldn’t instantly imply the OT characters were morons?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, and if you think my only problem is with TLJ, you haven’t heard me go off on the just-as-stupid “hyper under the shields” bs from TFA. Add in hyperskipping and each ST movie breaks the setting in its own way.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Hyperspeed had two explanations before Disneywars: Hyperspace is an alternate dimension (in which case hyperramming shouldn’t work) and, after Saxton’s canon ICS books, Hpwrspace as the tachyon of version of the universe, where mass is transformed into tachyonic mass (in which case hyperramming shouldn’t work).

Pretty sure one of those explanations made it explicitly impossible to 'fly right through a star, or bounce too close to a super-nova' either, but taking the time to explain the system in any level of detail is going to be rife with pitfalls.

Personally I would have preferred they ditch the idea of hyperspace ramming when they split legends off of canon, (have the Holdo maneuver work because the hyperspace tracking tech meant the Supremacy was partially in hyperspace at all times or something) but the inmates are still running the asylum at Lucasfilm despite what the Disney haters say.

We’ve never seen a hyperdrive set to “still” or destination=departure point, so if some wiseass put that in the next movie to, make the movie happen easier create a hyperspace shockwave that polarized the inverters and kept fleeing rebel fleets from escaping via hyperdrive, that would be cool? You wouldn’t have a problem bullshitting that into the setting like it wouldn’t instantly imply the OT characters were morons?

The interdictor is still canon: it has to work somehow!

Could we go back to making fun of other series' weird logistic stuff? How many times has the Enterprise been the only ship between earth and the Klingon border?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Hyperspeed had two explanations before Disneywars: Hyperspace is an alternate dimension (in which case hyperramming shouldn’t work) and, after Saxton’s canon ICS books, Hpwrspace as the tachyon of version of the universe, where mass is transformed into tachyonic mass (in which case hyperramming shouldn’t work).

The only explanation that actually works (except scientifically) is what Lucas put forward in the original film: Hyperspeed just means 'superfast' and the details are sort of vaguely handwaved. It consistent with both Lucas' and Abrams' ignorance of time, distance and basic units of measurement, and works with Johnson's stupid hyperram. It also works with the OT's need to navigate around obstacles. And its also consistent with Lucas' belief that going between two different solar systems without lightspeed is possible over the course of days rather than decades.

The only thing it doesn't work with is Abrams dumb idea that its possible to pass through shields at light speed but also decelerate safely between the shield and the planet. But that's his complete and utter ignorance of time, distance and the physical universe cropping up again. Which is also how we also somehow get light speed megalasers that are nigh-instantaneous and can be seen from the surface of other planets with the naked eye.

The Enterprise being the only ship near Earth can only be explained by psychotic admirals or malevolent superbeings. Fortunately, the setting has provided plenty of both.


The best explanation for Trek inconsistencies comes from the Department of Temporal Investigations books (and The Buried Age by the same author, sort of): space/subspace is unstable, there are constantly small temporal events and countless branching timelines that reconverge with the main timeline in messy ways. For example, Khan Noonien Singh exists in a branch caused by time travel, yet he exists in Kirk’s past, just as we do, without existing in our universe. Due to the sheer amount of time f—ery, there are lots of inconsistencies in cause and effect for any individual observer, and they may differ for each observer.

The JJ movies are still not canon, though.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The JJ movies are still not canon, though.

I'm on board with this plan if we can give Star Trek Beyond some kind of special exemption.

 Captain Joystick wrote:
The interdictor is still canon: it has to work somehow!

Gravity Well Projectors, which allow it the mass shadow of a planet.

As to how they work? Pass.

Well then go back to my original point. SciFi doesn't have a problem with numbers. The fans do.

Space Opera has a problem with numbers in the same way Superman has a problem with biology.

There is a reason it is also called space fantasy, because LotR is more scientifically accurate than Star Wars.

 Easy E wrote:

Spoiler:

Voss wrote:

 Easy E wrote:

Voss wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
The dirty secret of 40K and Star Wars is that there really are not that many worlds of the "Millions" that have a population of any size.

Taros is a great example. That was a "world" but it was a small mining world with a breathable atmosphere and limited water. The population was not large.

In addition, there are many "worlds" in these galaxies that are more like Venus and Mars with very small colonial populations and not much in the way of good press.

Therefore, worlds like Armageddon, Coruscant, Necromunda, and Corelia are the exception and not the rule. Most of the planet's in these "Galactic Empires" are just useless rocks. Therefore, you don't need anything to garrison or repress those. If they are not useless rocks, then they have smaller populations than Earth does.

I'm not sure that's actually true in Star Wars (In 40k its kind of a crap shoot). The Republic was a galactic entity for thousands of years- we really only see the tail end of it in the films.
There isn't anything at all to indicate that 'most' worlds are useless rocks- in theory a great many of them have signficant populations and are functionally Earthlike- populated and with their own rich histories, presumably going back even further. We don't see much of those worlds (pretty much every planet in the OT is a hellscape of one variety or other, barring the Yavin and Endor moons), but the avalanche of expanded material points to tens of thousands of 'Earths' if not more.

Well, we really only have our Solar System to go off of. If we only look at planets, you have a 1 in 8 (or 9 ) chance of having a useful planet. If we start adding moons and other satellites then the odds get even worse!

Now, let's also look at Star Wars the OT. We see 1 planet of value, and it gets blown up before we know anything about it. Tatooine is a desert, Hoth is a hellscape, Yavin is unlivable, there is an inhabited jungle moon, a small cloud city on a gas giant, etc. We see maybe 1 "earth like" planet out of .... 9 or so? The rest are primitve forest moons, or gas giants, or as you say.... Hellscapes. That doesn't give the Star Wars universe that much better odds than our real solar system of having a good planet worth fighting over.

No, that's a logic problem. You're looking at a stacked sample (chosen for distinctive filming locations and lack of extraneous people) and concluding that the setting is built using that as some sort of numeric average.
The planets we don't see (but get referenced) are very different. When they talk about worlds in star wars, they're not talking about the local equivalent of Mercury or Venus, they talk about inhabited places.

They're talking about this kind of list and its ridiculous (for a list of completely fictional places) 521 footnotes.
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_planets

Well then go back to my original point. SciFi doesn't have a problem with numbers. The fans do.

Erm. I'm not sure 'the fans' are the ones with this specific problem.
I can't think of many fan complaints about new worlds in the Disney trilogy (some that new desert planet isn't distinguishable from Tattooine, perhaps) or the impossibility of controlling planets.

I shrug, in part because an iconic scene of the OT is the smallest ship in the Rebel arsenal taking down the biggest ship we've ever seen by ramming into the bridge. The fact people accept the silly technical explanations for how that worked entertains me to no end. Very few iconic moments in the franchise care about the "rules" mostly because I don't think a single movie was written being aware they exist.

There is one rule......the rule of cool.

 Captain Joystick wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The JJ movies are still not canon, though.

I'm on board with this plan if we can give Star Trek Beyond some kind of special exemption.

Sure. That can be some kind of parallel timeline still.

 Tyran wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:
Even in Star Wars, E= MCsquared. Load a GR-75 with rocks and at lightspeed it'll have enough energy to melt the entire Death Star into slag.

Not quite, as if that was true FTL (at least how it is shown in Star Wars) would be impossible.

That's why most sci-fi settings have alternate universes or dimensions as shortcuts for FTL, because realspace FTL kinda breaks physics. And even with shortcuts, you run into the issue that FTL is time travel, but everyone ignores that (except the Xeeleeverse) so we can say that relativity (which includes E=MCsquared) isn't truly a thing in Star Wars, or most sci-fi settings for that matter.

BTW, a rock (or an hydrogen atom for that matter) at lightspeed wouldn't just melt the Death Star, it would break the universe*, because anything at lighspeed has infinite kinetic energy.

*If we want to be even more technical, the universe would still expand faster than the released energy (which is still shackled by lightspeed), so it wouldn't truly end the universe.

Except now we've seen it done in TLJ, so in SW it clearly IS possible.

Now I agree with you, PROR to TLJ I just assumed that lightspeed happened in an alternate dimension and the catastrophic effect of a mass shadow on a ship in this alternate lightspeed dimension was limited to the ship itself. That just made the Holdo Maneuver even more surprising - and silly - in my eyes,


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dysartes wrote:

 Captain Joystick wrote:
The interdictor is still canon: it has to work somehow!

Gravity Well Projectors, which allow it the mass shadow of a planet.

As to how they work? Pass.

How do they generate the mass shadow, or how does the mass shadow keep hyperdrives from working?

I'd always assumed a ship traveling in SW lightspeed would hit a mass shadow and, due to it's speed, experience the gravity of that mass shadow in a similar way to a normal-space ship experiences the gravity well of a black hole. In short, spaghettification (and somehow, that word actually IS in the spell-checker!) and destruction on a molecular level.

My point was that you cannot use relativity because Star Wars, TLJ included, is not using relativity. My point is that E=MCsquared is not a thing in Star Wars.

I’ve always assumed Gravity Well Projectors work by triggering Hyperspace Failsafes. They mimic the granitic mass of a planetary body, so the HF kicks in.

From there, good old shock and awe, as one assumes bypassing HF takes time to arrange, and isn’t something someone is just gonna fly around without day to day.

Indeed, flying around without the failsafes could be terminal more often then the times you run into a Interdictor using a gravity well projector.

Some sci-fi handles numbers perfectly.

Hitchhiker's Guide, for example.

Space, it says, is big. Really big. You think it's a long way down to the shops, but that's peanuts compared to space.

The books double down on this later, with the Total Perspective Vortex that shows you just how big space is. Which melts your brain.

 Tyran wrote:
My point was that you cannot use relativity because Star Wars, TLJ included, is not using relativity. My point is that E=MCsquared is not a thing in Star Wars.

Okay, then F=ma. Given the rate of acceleration ships have going from orbital speeds to hyperspace, that's STILL going to be a huge amount of force on impact.

It seems fairly parsimonious to assume that relativity holds in Star Wars until someone switches on the hyperdrive. Most conceptions of hyperdrive have the ftl ships separate from the universe and unable to interact with matter directly, aside from gravitational effects or neutrino-something-something.

Meanwhile Star Trek has fairly robust explanations for their ftl engines and how they interact with the real world. It helps that “subspace anomalies” and “unpredicTble particle interactions” are baked into the setting to explain away issues.