AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Given that both TFA and TLJ came up with a cool new hyperdrive maneuver, I'm hoping RoS will too. But I expect it'll be a third one.
Star Wars has at this point spanned many decades just in the main movies alone, but there's no real sense that war tactics are advancing. About the only new idea that has changed things in any ongoing fashion are Jedi learning how to become Force ghosts, and even then that's a one-sided thing. There are lots of clever gambits throughout the whole series, but they're almost never repeated or copied by the enemy or extrapolated into other situations. When Star Wars wants to change expectations for fighting, it does so technologically (Death Stars and the like) rather than tactically.
Ships at full light speed dont exist in real soace and only planet sized gravitational wells effect them. You have to hit on the acceleration.
At which point they're in range of defensive batteries. Holdo only works once really.
I'm a bit confused about the defensive battery comment. Wouldn't that equally apply to torpedoes? Star Wars engagement distances are really short (to match the WWII aesthetic), so if defensive batteries worked for hyperjumps I'm not sure why it wouldn't work for hyperdrones/hyper missiles.
It would. Hyperdrones/missiles do not work, they will be destroyed by defensive batteries.
I'm not sure about that since TFA had them doing a hyperspace jump right into a planet's atmosphere, so I don't think the old EU rules about gravity wells applies anymore.
Nah, they explicitly mention how its suicide and isn't likely to work.
Yeah, but it worked which means either there was something special about the planet (you could argue that the mass wasn't high enough). Running into the planet being a danger is a bit different from the old rule that intense gravity wells would pull you out of hyperspace. Then again, that is possibly something that the EU came up with and you could always fly into a planet if you so desired just by deactivating your safeties/misplotting your jump. Which would make people seem pretty cavalier about the dangers of jumping in close to a planet, but I can buy that they are going for the fantasy approach and not the sci-fi approach.
Not sure what you're trying to say here. The old rule was "you have to be careful, traveling through hyperspace is not like dusting crops, without precise coordinates you'd fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova"
If you're close enough to a planet that the gravity well takes you out of hyperspace you're probably inside the planet. The Jump was insane because you have to come out of hyperspace behind the shield but not inside the planet. It was never posited anywhere that such a thing would be impossible because you could not get close to the planet.
Which is to say that it worked because Han Solo is such a great pilot/The Force.
On the first part, why do they have proton torpedoes and concussion missiles if they will get shot down by defensive batteries?
If batteries are such a big hard counter to missiles, I guess you'd want to take them out first before doing your bombing run/missile strike like Poe did for the slow moving slow firing bombers at the start of TLJ. It seems like the hyper drone might be a more a more cost effective approach.
Agreed on the second paragraph.
Because if you clear out the defensive batteries you dont need to waste a hyperdrive on the target. (Also no telling if it would have enough mass to get things done)
If you just use the hyperdrive weapon in the first shot, you win and there's no risk of getting shot up by anything. Further, hyperdrive involves some amount of moving up to near lightspeed; even at a mere 10% of light speed as it ramps up to jump, an X-wing would hit with approximately one thousand times the energy of the first atom bombs. Mass rapidly becomes irrelevant at the velocities involved with any significant percentage of light speed.
And there are piles of hyperdrive-equipped fighters and ships all over the place, there is no indication at all that hyperdrives are at all rare or expensive compared to a ship. If the entire history of the setting didn't have an in-built reason for hyperdrive suicide attacks to not work, then every last space combat in the setting would also be determined by hyperspace drone missile fights. There would be no fucking point to torpedoes or counterbatteries or fighters or anything, because any large ship could easily carry enough drones to overwhelm the defenses of any single ship shown in Star Wars. Aiming wouldn't even be hard, you could eyeball it since you don't care if the weapons come out of hyperspace somewhere else if they miss. Heck, make the weapons explode as they jump to hyperspace and you've got cheap, easy space shotguns that could knock out a ship with each shot.
If a hyperspace missile works in TLJ simply because nobody in the other movies or shows actually sat down and explicitly said "hyperdrive attacks don't work because that's what shields are for" (despite the long-running implicit indication that that's what half the damn point of shields), then I look forward to Godzilla showing up as a Jedi. It's never been explicitly stated in the setting that he doesn't exist, so clearly it's possible nobody has thought of just going over and getting him yet.
How much energy does a laser cannon possess?
A: who cares but it can literally be anything we want it to be so it could be equivalent to a snub fighter at just sub hyperspace velocity.
This happened in Rogue 1(Vaders destroyer exited light speed into a frigate) and no one batted an eye.
If the mon cal cruiser and an x-wing have the same density/proportions then a cruiser is roughly one million times more massive than an x-wing(as its about 100 times as long and volume and therefore mass is a cubed process). Since kinetic energy is proportional to mass it would reason that even a large fighter would bounce off the shields of a capital ship. The cruiser took out like what? 10 or 20 ships? So an x-wing would take out roughly/top end estimate 20/1,000,000= 1/50,000 of a star destroyer
All you need is 50,000 lightspeed capable snub fighters! That is a LOT of lightspeed missiles. Compared to like 2-3 torps
Also note that the cruiser missed. Had that been a regular star destroyer she would not have impacted and skated harmlessly by
Edit: derped hard with the volume to mass construction. Used a square approximation originally which is hella wrong.
Yanno, I just realized those games accidentally taught a whole bunch of us how to dive bomb just by virtue of necessity due to needing to figure out how to get those things on target without us or them getting shot down. Boost speed up as much as possible, get in close, release, and GTFO.
Dive bombing is a lot of fun, but the reason it exists is to 1) minimize the distance the bomb needs to fall and 2) be able to see the target visually through the site (or HUD in modern platforms). Also you need to recover the jet afterwards and no sim I've played has accurately depicted what a real recover looks like, much less feels like. For the first few moments you're not actually arresting your fall, and you have to put massive G on the jet to do a proper recovery.
This honestly just sounds like modern BVR combat which is pretty damn visually boring tbh. You're just launching missiles at blips on a sensor readout.
Hard disagree! The tension is knowing that if you don't get that lock and shoot in time you're going to die! edit: visually you can depict that in the same way you do with Submarine combat: you focus on the pilot saying "Come on, come on!" add the sound effects of the RWR warbling, maybe hear his wingman ask over the radio in a strained voice, "Status?!"
I don't think we're going to see hyperspace used like that again.
I refuse to talk at all about the Holdo Maneuver other than to say it was the most visually striking scene in the movie.
Yeah, but this is in terms of a movie action scene. Sub scenes are tense but they're an entirely different animal in a movie that's usually a slower paced character movie or political thriller where even then it's much more focused on the people inside of the machine and how they're dealing with all that unknown. Two subs shooting at each other isn't visually exciting, what makes them good is that pure fear of being inside a can and just hearing those pings and hoping for the best. Similarly, I can't think of a modern movie featuring BVR plane combat precisely because it just doesn't make for a good action scene. A submarines in space sort of movie would be a very, very different animal from what Star Wars is. It'd be more like how you read 40k capital ship fights going down.
As far as the dive bombing thing goes, I've done it in IL-2 but not in a modern jet sim just because modern planes look cool but I find them to be pretty boring to fly. My dive bomb comment was confined to the X-Wing games. Space bombs are slow as shit and easy to shoot down so by sheer virtue of necessity you tended to learn to get in, launch, and pull out without eating shit in the process to ensure that your limited payload made contact which ends up functioning like an arcade dive bomb run. Yeah, in a WW2 plane you need to avoid overspeeding or you're gonna either lawndart or break-up but it still brings back my fun kid feels of launching space bombs into things.
You can edit this clip in Top Gun from start until Hollywood gets shot down to make it BVR and the only difference would be two shots: delete where the F-5 suddenly ends up behind the formation, and where the LCOS pipper catches up to the target lock (which makes no sense anyway). That whole sequence skips basically all of the BVR and into WVR transition for some reason, which I think is because the average Joe has no idea that planes can shoot further than they can see. I agree with you though that it's an entirely different feeling from Star Wars, but I was disagreeing with your original comment that it's inherently boring visually.
Last comment about dive bombing in WWII: I haven't read much about the planes breaking up because of overspeeding, but after reading Robin Olds' memoirs I was flabbergasted that pilots were killing themselves in dives because they approached the transonic region and the airflow delaminated from the wings' control surfaces. Later in his book it sounds there wasn't a good understanding of G-limits on aircraft or on preventative maintenance looking for aircraft stress. What an incredible and terrifying time to be flying!
I don't have much else to add about space fighting in Star Wars. I think the battles in A New Hope and Rogue One are my favorite, with The Force Awakens as a close third. I like it best when there's a manageable number of aircraft that I can sort of keep track with, and the fights feel very personal and tense.
Late to the party, but yeah, the bombers looked incredibly dumb and not cool, HOWEVER, they would really work in a X-wing Vs Tie fighter game, where all torpedos not launched 2 meters away from the target gets intercepted.
No, but only because capital ships carrying anti-starfighter lasers (and ONLY those lasers--look it up, they cut a lot of corners in those games) could shoot both the bombs and the bombers down.
(I'm just here for the Totally Games reference.)
Heavy bombs were in the game, although they worked like dive bombers, I remember them being pretty effective. But it might have been some add-on, or expansion.
Space bombs, specifically, worked like really slow heavy rockets, which in turn worked like really slow proton torpedoes. Which actually did kind of encourage you to use them in a sort of "dive bombing" strategy (though really, "boom and zoom" would probably be more accurate a description). Blame in-game engine limitations for that.
They absolutely did not travel "downwards" from your ship like you were carpet bombing Laos or something. They actually traveled forwards, and couldn't really maneuver in any other direction. Of course, in ESB we see TIE Bombers using gravity bombs against, well, some body with gravity (a planetoid). Though the TIE Bombers weren't striking a target with air defense capability, and they were more spread out.
Thinking about, TIE Bombers were cooler than the Space B-29s. Not as cool as Assault Gunboats though.
Something I'm expecting is that whenever a capital ship knows they are going down and would previously say "ramming speed", I expect them to now use a hyperjump attack for their suicide ramming attack. This of course means they need to have their hyperdrive available and to not explode when they engage their hyperdrive, but it adds an additional danger that every enemy ship could pose right up until they are completely destroyed or their hyperdrives are disabled. We'll probably see a lot more of targeting the engines first should the engagements show that type of detail. I'm not sure if the hyperdrive has been said to be the big glowing bits at the back or if those are just the sublight engines.
Why not? I mean, TLJ did some cool and interesting stuff with the space combat. Star Wars has historically built onto previous things they've done in space combat and hasn't thrown things out wholesale. The newer movies have been better and better about doing this, i.e. Battle of Scarif in Rogue 1, or the quick strike in Rogue 1 on the complex that they pinpoint which takes advantage of the x-wings having internal hyperdrives.
Something I didn't really think of too clearly until now is the fact that electronic warfare as part of space combat seems to be a much bigger thing than previously shown. They hack the shields of the super-mega-duper star destroyer to get in and they also use a sensor stealthing effect that can be hacked to counter. These both open up additional storytelling approaches to solving problems encountered by the good/bad guys in their space combat and it would be a shame if they didn't continue to build on what they came up with as they have done in the past.
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ShadowenSnores in the morningLoserdomRegistered Userregular
Two things about the hyperdrive ram:
1. It was never used before because in all instances in the past, if you were able to jump to hyperspace, that was it. You had, if not won, then at least avoided losing.
2. It will not be used in the future because it didn't actually work. It couldn't even destroy the Supremacy and the other ships were more collateral damage than anything. It did nothing but buy the Resistance a bit more time to wait for inevitable death. Only Rey turning up, which was not part of the plan, saved them.
So was reading about the Galaxy's Edge attraction opening at Disney Land this week and they announced pricing for lightsabers and custom robots.
According to Disneyland's website, you can build a custom lightsaber at Savi's Workshop for $199.99, plus tax. The experience is so authentic and is expected to be so popular, you may need to book a reservation.
In addition, you can build your own custom droid at Droid Depot for $99.99, plus tax.
But it was this part of the article that really made me chuckle:
Disney said guests at Disneyland will need a reservation to visit Galaxy's Edge when it opens on Friday, and will be limited to four hours inside the land.
A special wristband will keep track of your time limit, and once it expires, employees dressed as Stormtroopers will usher you out, according to Disney.
Can already picture people with their $200 lightsabers fending off trooper employees.
1. It was never used before because in all instances in the past, if you were able to jump to hyperspace, that was it. You had, if not won, then at least avoided losing.
2. It will not be used in the future because it didn't actually work. It couldn't even destroy the Supremacy and the other ships were more collateral damage than anything. It did nothing but buy the Resistance a bit more time to wait for inevitable death. Only Rey turning up, which was not part of the plan, saved them.
Point 1 works for a lot of situations wjere personal survival is paramount, but I imagine there will still be some cases where carrying the day in a larger battle (see Rogue One) will mean that sacrificing one ship that is going down or has limited ability to contribute further to the might mean the crew decides a suicide attack is the best call.
Point 2 doesn't make sense. That is like saying since a gun doesn't always kill it is useless and will never be used again. I mean, according to the director (as best as I can recollect) the hyperspace attack was an innovation by Holdo and had never been considered or used before. It didn't completely destroy the Supremacy, but having your ship get cut in half is generally considered a situation you want to avoid. I think the Raddus is a few KM long while the Supremacy is like 80 km wide. The hyperspace ram still did a lot of damage and unless there is some reason the attack method can't be replicated that wasn't told in the movie or mentioned by the director, I'd expect it to be at least addressed in some way if they don't go for my preferred approach of adding it to the space warfare toolbox.
1. It was never used before because in all instances in the past, if you were able to jump to hyperspace, that was it. You had, if not won, then at least avoided losing.
2. It will not be used in the future because it didn't actually work. It couldn't even destroy the Supremacy and the other ships were more collateral damage than anything. It did nothing but buy the Resistance a bit more time to wait for inevitable death. Only Rey turning up, which was not part of the plan, saved them.
Point 1 works for a lot of situations wjere personal survival is paramount, but I imagine there will still be some cases where carrying the day in a larger battle (see Rogue One) will mean that sacrificing one ship that is going down or has limited ability to contribute further to the might mean the crew decides a suicide attack is the best call.
Point 2 doesn't make sense. That is like saying since a gun doesn't always kill it is useless and will never be used again. I mean, according to the director (as best as I can recollect) the hyperspace attack was an innovation by Holdo and had never been considered or used before. It didn't completely destroy the Supremacy, but having your ship get cut in half is generally considered a situation you want to avoid. I think the Raddus is a few KM long while the Supremacy is like 80 km wide. The hyperspace ram still did a lot of damage and unless there is some reason the attack method can't be replicated that wasn't told in the movie or mentioned by the director, I'd expect it to be at least addressed in some way if they don't go for my preferred approach of adding it to the space warfare toolbox.
Yeah point 2 doesn't really work for me... it crippled a ship that their entire combined fleet couldn't touch, and destroyed numerous large, powerful capital ships and their crews of tens of thousands that went along with them
A few more suicide jumps and the first order runs out of people...
override367 on
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ShadowenSnores in the morningLoserdomRegistered Userregular
In an ideal situation with regard to enemy type (large, less-agile ships), deployment (clustered relatively close together), resources available (one very large ship that had outlived its usefulness), and necessity (do this or the Resistance dies), the hyperspace ram couldn't even achieve its objective, to whit: prevent the First Order from being able to catch and kill the survivors of the Resistance.
It was impressive and beautiful and brilliant and I loved it and it failed.
As for a war of attrition...that only works when you actually outnumber the enemy. Considering the combat resources displayed by the Resistance and the First Order in VII and VIII, who would win a war of attrition?
Background: The Star Tours ride at Disney was revamped a few years ago, and now has a bunch of randomized elements. Sometimes when you ride it, Jar Jar will make a cameo appearance, and your ship will barely miss hitting him.
I went to a presentation about the ride where Disney Imagineers talked about it. One of the audience members raised their hand and asked: "I heard a rumor that there is a very, very small chance that instead of barely missing Jar Jar, your ship will run over him and kill him. Is that true?"
In an ideal situation with regard to enemy type (large, less-agile ships), deployment (clustered relatively close together), resources available (one very large ship that had outlived its usefulness), and necessity (do this or the Resistance dies), the hyperspace ram couldn't even achieve its objective, to whit: prevent the First Order from being able to catch and kill the survivors of the Resistance.
It was impressive and beautiful and brilliant and I loved it and it failed.
As for a war of attrition...that only works when you actually outnumber the enemy. Considering the combat resources displayed by the Resistance and the First Order in VII and VIII, who would win a war of attrition?
I know I said I wouldn't get involved, but I'm having trouble following your argument. Wars of Attrition are a form of traditional warfare, i.e. state v state. The Resistance is conducting a guerilla war, i.e. irregular warfare conducted by non-state actors v state. As such asymmetric damage like trading one capital ship for multiple capital ships is their bread and butter.
Continuing on with asymmetric warfare, the Resistance committed a terrible blunder in putting all their leadership on the same flagship. They also weren't mobile enough to avoid being trapped by the First Order. These things are what kill organizations of this nature. Going forward they'll need to disperse and use loose connected networks to survive... much like the original rebellion.
'Young X' where X is appropriate to the theme of whatever the kids are doing is the preferred language. So 'Young Jedi' if you're doing the lightsaber building or Jedi Training Academy stuff, or 'Young Smuggers' or 'Young rogues' if you're doing Smuggler's Run.
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ShadowenSnores in the morningLoserdomRegistered Userregular
In an ideal situation with regard to enemy type (large, less-agile ships), deployment (clustered relatively close together), resources available (one very large ship that had outlived its usefulness), and necessity (do this or the Resistance dies), the hyperspace ram couldn't even achieve its objective, to whit: prevent the First Order from being able to catch and kill the survivors of the Resistance.
It was impressive and beautiful and brilliant and I loved it and it failed.
As for a war of attrition...that only works when you actually outnumber the enemy. Considering the combat resources displayed by the Resistance and the First Order in VII and VIII, who would win a war of attrition?
I know I said I wouldn't get involved, but I'm having trouble following your argument. Wars of Attrition are a form of traditional warfare, i.e. state v state. The Resistance is conducting a guerilla war, i.e. irregular warfare conducted by non-state actors v state. As such asymmetric damage like trading one capital ship for multiple capital ships is their bread and butter.
You don't follow how when you have very few of a thing and don't have ready access to more, sacrificing one to take out a few belonging to someone who very clearly has many many more of the thing and the capacity to get more...isn't a good trade?
Regardless: the hyperspace ram, while awesome, was a failure, because it did not achieve the bare minimum of "keep this group of the First Order from destroying the Resistance". This was in conditions as ideal as they could be in the field. Along with "escaping to hyperspace" meaning "you avoided getting killed" for most of galactic history, this is why the tactic has never come up before, and why it will likely not see use again.
Later, Finn attempts a broadly similar tactic against the mini Death Star that, it is strongly implied, would not have worked anyway, but is saved at the last moment, because (and the character says this out loud in thuddingly obvious dialog) you blowing shit up because you hate it isn't how you win, you win by keeping what you care about safe.
Then Luke shows up and ghosts Kylo rather than fighting him, because Kylo is very easy to goad into fighting Luke, because Kylo hates Luke. This gives Rey, who flew air cover to protect the Resistance during the battle, time to get the survivors of the Resistance, among whom is Finn, who is her friend, away.
There's a pattern here, one that is echoed throughout Star Wars. Maybe it doesn't make much textual sense to you, but thematically it all tracks.
The Resistance won't try the hyperspace trick again because they don't have the ships to spare
The First Order won't adopt it because they're way too arrogant to honestly resort to any level of sacrifice to defeat the Resistance
This does constrain the writers because it means they can't put the Rebels into a do or die situation where it would make sense to sacrifice everything in order to succeed. It also presumes that the attack only works with a capital sized ship and they can't afford to throw old freighters that cost a bit more than a used car at the enemy ships in order to do a bunch of damage.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
The Resistance won't try the hyperspace trick again because they don't have the ships to spare
The First Order won't adopt it because they're way too arrogant to honestly resort to any level of sacrifice to defeat the Resistance
This does constrain the writers because it means they can't put the Rebels into a do or die situation where it would make sense to sacrifice everything in order to succeed. It also presumes that the attack only works with a capital sized ship and they can't afford to throw old freighters that cost a bit more than a used car at the enemy ships in order to do a bunch of damage.
The Resistance won't try the hyperspace trick again because they don't have the ships to spare
The First Order won't adopt it because they're way too arrogant to honestly resort to any level of sacrifice to defeat the Resistance
Ignoring that hyperspace tech has been around for at least four thousand years in the setting and it would be impossibly idiotic if nobody else in that whole timeframe weaponized a hyperspace attack before, the First Order happily keeps up the tradition of "throw bodies at the problem". The officers wouldn't be up for anything as like piloting a hyperspace attack, but they would order underlings to do it in a heartbeat. They've got a whole stormtrooper army raised on the idea that their only worth is following orders and killing enemies.
Not to mention that droids are perfectly capable of piloting ships in the setting and the First Order is apparently some kind of industrial monster, so it would be chump change for them to throw together a bunch of cheap drone hyperspace missiles and hand them out like candy. Heck, they love hardware solutions to problems, and that would be the end-all solution to enemy ships. They'd be all over it, in a variety of models.
Hyperspace tracking is what puts the writers in a bind. Every fight is to the death when fleeing is taken off the table.
The hyperspace tracker went down with the mega ship. Simple.
I wonder if there is a quote from the movie to refute that...
"I like where your head's at, but no, they'll only start tracking us from another destroyer"
Like I said, hyperspace tracking means every fight is total elimination. I'm sure this will either be ignored going forward, or the good guys will invent the Trace Buster Buster Buster.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Hyperspace tracking is what puts the writers in a bind. Every fight is to the death when fleeing is taken off the table.
The hyperspace tracker went down with the mega ship. Simple.
I wonder if there is a quote from the movie to refute that...
"I like where your head's at, but no, they'll only start tracking us from another destroyer"
Like I said, hyperspace tracking means every fight is total elimination. I'm sure this will either be ignored going forward, or the good guys will invent the Trace Buster Buster Buster.
I thought part of the reason they couldn’t just flee is that they only had enough fuel for one jump. If you have fuel for multiple jumps in quick succession the tracking can’t follow.
Hyperspace tracking is what puts the writers in a bind. Every fight is to the death when fleeing is taken off the table.
The hyperspace tracker went down with the mega ship. Simple.
I wonder if there is a quote from the movie to refute that...
"I like where your head's at, but no, they'll only start tracking us from another destroyer"
Like I said, hyperspace tracking means every fight is total elimination. I'm sure this will either be ignored going forward, or the good guys will invent the Trace Buster Buster Buster.
I thought part of the reason they couldn’t just flee is that they only had enough fuel for one jump. If you have fuel for multiple jumps in quick succession the tracking can’t follow.
That was the flagship leaving its base of operation. Unless the Resistance just lets it sit in the garage on an eighth of a tank, I think we saw exactly how many jumps a fully fueled cruiser can do. 2. And each jump takes calculations, so unless you just want to end up between stars without gas, you're going to need time. The First Order showed up in the time it took Poe to get demoted.
Why would the First Order only track with the lead ship, anyway? Splitting up just stymies the entire project?
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
In the year or two between TRoS and TLJ, they figured out how to cloak their ships from hyperspace tracking. There, problem solved.
In an ideal situation with regard to enemy type (large, less-agile ships), deployment (clustered relatively close together), resources available (one very large ship that had outlived its usefulness), and necessity (do this or the Resistance dies), the hyperspace ram couldn't even achieve its objective, to whit: prevent the First Order from being able to catch and kill the survivors of the Resistance.
It was impressive and beautiful and brilliant and I loved it and it failed.
As for a war of attrition...that only works when you actually outnumber the enemy. Considering the combat resources displayed by the Resistance and the First Order in VII and VIII, who would win a war of attrition?
I know I said I wouldn't get involved, but I'm having trouble following your argument. Wars of Attrition are a form of traditional warfare, i.e. state v state. The Resistance is conducting a guerilla war, i.e. irregular warfare conducted by non-state actors v state. As such asymmetric damage like trading one capital ship for multiple capital ships is their bread and butter.
You don't follow how when you have very few of a thing and don't have ready access to more, sacrificing one to take out a few belonging to someone who very clearly has many many more of the thing and the capacity to get more...isn't a good trade?
Regardless: the hyperspace ram, while awesome, was a failure, because it did not achieve the bare minimum of "keep this group of the First Order from destroying the Resistance". This was in conditions as ideal as they could be in the field. Along with "escaping to hyperspace" meaning "you avoided getting killed" for most of galactic history, this is why the tactic has never come up before, and why it will likely not see use again.
Later, Finn attempts a broadly similar tactic against the mini Death Star that, it is strongly implied, would not have worked anyway, but is saved at the last moment, because (and the character says this out loud in thuddingly obvious dialog) you blowing shit up because you hate it isn't how you win, you win by keeping what you care about safe.
Then Luke shows up and ghosts Kylo rather than fighting him, because Kylo is very easy to goad into fighting Luke, because Kylo hates Luke. This gives Rey, who flew air cover to protect the Resistance during the battle, time to get the survivors of the Resistance, among whom is Finn, who is her friend, away.
There's a pattern here, one that is echoed throughout Star Wars. Maybe it doesn't make much textual sense to you, but thematically it all tracks.
I have wanted to say this for a while now, so don't take this personally Shadowen. You are right in that the movie says this both thematically and literally, and it fits with both the themes of the ST and the OT, Maybe even the PT.
But the bolded is the stupidest fucking idea I have ever heard in my fucking life. It has been pissing me off ever since I heard it in the movie.
If all you do in war is play defense you are going to lose. And lose badly. Now you shouldn't throw you life away. You win a war by making the other son of bitch die gloriously for his country, not dying gloriously for yours. But still surrendering the initiative is just really dumb.
Sorry just had to vent about that. I should know better than to expect realistic military stuff from Star Wars, where after thousands of years of fighting they still haven't figured out that space is three dimensional and you don't have to move away or towards your enemies horizontally.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
In an ideal situation with regard to enemy type (large, less-agile ships), deployment (clustered relatively close together), resources available (one very large ship that had outlived its usefulness), and necessity (do this or the Resistance dies), the hyperspace ram couldn't even achieve its objective, to whit: prevent the First Order from being able to catch and kill the survivors of the Resistance.
It was impressive and beautiful and brilliant and I loved it and it failed.
As for a war of attrition...that only works when you actually outnumber the enemy. Considering the combat resources displayed by the Resistance and the First Order in VII and VIII, who would win a war of attrition?
I know I said I wouldn't get involved, but I'm having trouble following your argument. Wars of Attrition are a form of traditional warfare, i.e. state v state. The Resistance is conducting a guerilla war, i.e. irregular warfare conducted by non-state actors v state. As such asymmetric damage like trading one capital ship for multiple capital ships is their bread and butter.
You don't follow how when you have very few of a thing and don't have ready access to more, sacrificing one to take out a few belonging to someone who very clearly has many many more of the thing and the capacity to get more...isn't a good trade?
Regardless: the hyperspace ram, while awesome, was a failure, because it did not achieve the bare minimum of "keep this group of the First Order from destroying the Resistance". This was in conditions as ideal as they could be in the field. Along with "escaping to hyperspace" meaning "you avoided getting killed" for most of galactic history, this is why the tactic has never come up before, and why it will likely not see use again.
Later, Finn attempts a broadly similar tactic against the mini Death Star that, it is strongly implied, would not have worked anyway, but is saved at the last moment, because (and the character says this out loud in thuddingly obvious dialog) you blowing shit up because you hate it isn't how you win, you win by keeping what you care about safe.
Then Luke shows up and ghosts Kylo rather than fighting him, because Kylo is very easy to goad into fighting Luke, because Kylo hates Luke. This gives Rey, who flew air cover to protect the Resistance during the battle, time to get the survivors of the Resistance, among whom is Finn, who is her friend, away.
There's a pattern here, one that is echoed throughout Star Wars. Maybe it doesn't make much textual sense to you, but thematically it all tracks.
I have wanted to say this for a while now, so don't take this personally Shadowen. You are right in that the movie says this both thematically and literally, and it fits with both the themes of the ST and the OT, Maybe even the PT.
But the bolded is the stupidest fucking idea I have ever heard in my fucking life. It has been pissing me off ever since I heard it in the movie.
If all you do in war is play defense you are going to lose. And lose badly. Now you shouldn't throw you life away. You win a war by making the other son of bitch die gloriously for his country, not dying gloriously for yours. But still surrendering the initiative is just really dumb.
Sorry just had to vent about that. I should know better than to expect realistic military stuff from Star Wars, where after thousands of years of fighting they still haven't figured out that space is three dimensional and you don't have to move away or towards your enemies horizontally.
It doesn't mean staying on defensive, it just means you gotta war smart, not war hard.
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MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
Lining up hyperdrive missiles get shot by ties just as easily as lining up bombers. I dont understand why this is so necessary
You leave the hyperdrive missiles way out at the edge of the system, then transmit the targetting data to them. Then they jump and obliterate the target in a single strike with no opportunity for the enemy to counteract them, because FTL.
Honestly as amazing as the effect was in TLJ I really wish they hadn't done it, as it makes capital ship engagements utterly nonsensical.
Edit: "Hyperdrive missiles," here, is "asteroids we harvested from the Hoth system and strapped engines to."
Ships move though? Hyperdrive coordinates are based on astrogation; known quantities and values of things like the locations of stars, or asteroid belts. You can't use that to track a manned vessel because there would be no way for astrogation to predict enemy movements.
EDIT: Also, wasn't there a ton of collateral damage other than the direct damage suffered by the capital ship? You'd have to use it when there were no friendly vessels even close to the one you're targetting, because those would be destroyed as well.
Being a fan of the effect, I actually look forward to how the writers come up with refinements to the technique and countermeasures. I will just be disappointed if it gets ignored because it would lessen the revolutionary nature of Holdo's tactic and turn it from something that could change space warfare to just a bit of dumb luck that only worked because the first order didn't take a basic action to counter it. It'd be nice if a women character could be a tactical genius, which would further cement her legacy and help reinforce the messaging of TLJ that Poe should have trusted her evwn if she didn't fit his preconceived notions of what an admiral looks and acts like (a typical military man).
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Star Wars has at this point spanned many decades just in the main movies alone, but there's no real sense that war tactics are advancing. About the only new idea that has changed things in any ongoing fashion are Jedi learning how to become Force ghosts, and even then that's a one-sided thing. There are lots of clever gambits throughout the whole series, but they're almost never repeated or copied by the enemy or extrapolated into other situations. When Star Wars wants to change expectations for fighting, it does so technologically (Death Stars and the like) rather than tactically.
How much energy does a laser cannon possess?
A: who cares but it can literally be anything we want it to be so it could be equivalent to a snub fighter at just sub hyperspace velocity.
This happened in Rogue 1(Vaders destroyer exited light speed into a frigate) and no one batted an eye.
If the mon cal cruiser and an x-wing have the same density/proportions then a cruiser is roughly one million times more massive than an x-wing(as its about 100 times as long and volume and therefore mass is a cubed process). Since kinetic energy is proportional to mass it would reason that even a large fighter would bounce off the shields of a capital ship. The cruiser took out like what? 10 or 20 ships? So an x-wing would take out roughly/top end estimate 20/1,000,000= 1/50,000 of a star destroyer
All you need is 50,000 lightspeed capable snub fighters! That is a LOT of lightspeed missiles. Compared to like 2-3 torps
Also note that the cruiser missed. Had that been a regular star destroyer she would not have impacted and skated harmlessly by
Edit: derped hard with the volume to mass construction. Used a square approximation originally which is hella wrong.
You can edit this clip in Top Gun from start until Hollywood gets shot down to make it BVR and the only difference would be two shots: delete where the F-5 suddenly ends up behind the formation, and where the LCOS pipper catches up to the target lock (which makes no sense anyway). That whole sequence skips basically all of the BVR and into WVR transition for some reason, which I think is because the average Joe has no idea that planes can shoot further than they can see. I agree with you though that it's an entirely different feeling from Star Wars, but I was disagreeing with your original comment that it's inherently boring visually.
Last comment about dive bombing in WWII: I haven't read much about the planes breaking up because of overspeeding, but after reading Robin Olds' memoirs I was flabbergasted that pilots were killing themselves in dives because they approached the transonic region and the airflow delaminated from the wings' control surfaces. Later in his book it sounds there wasn't a good understanding of G-limits on aircraft or on preventative maintenance looking for aircraft stress. What an incredible and terrifying time to be flying!
I don't have much else to add about space fighting in Star Wars. I think the battles in A New Hope and Rogue One are my favorite, with The Force Awakens as a close third. I like it best when there's a manageable number of aircraft that I can sort of keep track with, and the fights feel very personal and tense.
Space bombs, specifically, worked like really slow heavy rockets, which in turn worked like really slow proton torpedoes. Which actually did kind of encourage you to use them in a sort of "dive bombing" strategy (though really, "boom and zoom" would probably be more accurate a description). Blame in-game engine limitations for that.
They absolutely did not travel "downwards" from your ship like you were carpet bombing Laos or something. They actually traveled forwards, and couldn't really maneuver in any other direction. Of course, in ESB we see TIE Bombers using gravity bombs against, well, some body with gravity (a planetoid). Though the TIE Bombers weren't striking a target with air defense capability, and they were more spread out.
Thinking about, TIE Bombers were cooler than the Space B-29s. Not as cool as Assault Gunboats though.
You are correct. Though the mass conversion still alplies.
Something I didn't really think of too clearly until now is the fact that electronic warfare as part of space combat seems to be a much bigger thing than previously shown. They hack the shields of the super-mega-duper star destroyer to get in and they also use a sensor stealthing effect that can be hacked to counter. These both open up additional storytelling approaches to solving problems encountered by the good/bad guys in their space combat and it would be a shame if they didn't continue to build on what they came up with as they have done in the past.
1. It was never used before because in all instances in the past, if you were able to jump to hyperspace, that was it. You had, if not won, then at least avoided losing.
2. It will not be used in the future because it didn't actually work. It couldn't even destroy the Supremacy and the other ships were more collateral damage than anything. It did nothing but buy the Resistance a bit more time to wait for inevitable death. Only Rey turning up, which was not part of the plan, saved them.
But it was this part of the article that really made me chuckle:
Can already picture people with their $200 lightsabers fending off trooper employees.
Point 1 works for a lot of situations wjere personal survival is paramount, but I imagine there will still be some cases where carrying the day in a larger battle (see Rogue One) will mean that sacrificing one ship that is going down or has limited ability to contribute further to the might mean the crew decides a suicide attack is the best call.
Point 2 doesn't make sense. That is like saying since a gun doesn't always kill it is useless and will never be used again. I mean, according to the director (as best as I can recollect) the hyperspace attack was an innovation by Holdo and had never been considered or used before. It didn't completely destroy the Supremacy, but having your ship get cut in half is generally considered a situation you want to avoid. I think the Raddus is a few KM long while the Supremacy is like 80 km wide. The hyperspace ram still did a lot of damage and unless there is some reason the attack method can't be replicated that wasn't told in the movie or mentioned by the director, I'd expect it to be at least addressed in some way if they don't go for my preferred approach of adding it to the space warfare toolbox.
The tactics and viability of it doesn't matter. Its entire point was to serve a singular story purpose and that has been accomplished.
An efficient critique of the prequels if there ever was one.
pleasepaypreacher.net
I mean it kind of undermined the entire point about how one shouldn't go off and do crazy heroic stuff because it gets everyone killed
Yeah point 2 doesn't really work for me... it crippled a ship that their entire combined fleet couldn't touch, and destroyed numerous large, powerful capital ships and their crews of tens of thousands that went along with them
A few more suicide jumps and the first order runs out of people...
It was impressive and beautiful and brilliant and I loved it and it failed.
As for a war of attrition...that only works when you actually outnumber the enemy. Considering the combat resources displayed by the Resistance and the First Order in VII and VIII, who would win a war of attrition?
Background: The Star Tours ride at Disney was revamped a few years ago, and now has a bunch of randomized elements. Sometimes when you ride it, Jar Jar will make a cameo appearance, and your ship will barely miss hitting him.
I went to a presentation about the ride where Disney Imagineers talked about it. One of the audience members raised their hand and asked: "I heard a rumor that there is a very, very small chance that instead of barely missing Jar Jar, your ship will run over him and kill him. Is that true?"
Imagineer: "No comment."
I know I said I wouldn't get involved, but I'm having trouble following your argument. Wars of Attrition are a form of traditional warfare, i.e. state v state. The Resistance is conducting a guerilla war, i.e. irregular warfare conducted by non-state actors v state. As such asymmetric damage like trading one capital ship for multiple capital ships is their bread and butter.
Continuing on with asymmetric warfare, the Resistance committed a terrible blunder in putting all their leadership on the same flagship. They also weren't mobile enough to avoid being trapped by the First Order. These things are what kill organizations of this nature. Going forward they'll need to disperse and use loose connected networks to survive... much like the original rebellion.
'Young X' where X is appropriate to the theme of whatever the kids are doing is the preferred language. So 'Young Jedi' if you're doing the lightsaber building or Jedi Training Academy stuff, or 'Young Smuggers' or 'Young rogues' if you're doing Smuggler's Run.
You don't follow how when you have very few of a thing and don't have ready access to more, sacrificing one to take out a few belonging to someone who very clearly has many many more of the thing and the capacity to get more...isn't a good trade?
Regardless: the hyperspace ram, while awesome, was a failure, because it did not achieve the bare minimum of "keep this group of the First Order from destroying the Resistance". This was in conditions as ideal as they could be in the field. Along with "escaping to hyperspace" meaning "you avoided getting killed" for most of galactic history, this is why the tactic has never come up before, and why it will likely not see use again.
Later, Finn attempts a broadly similar tactic against the mini Death Star that, it is strongly implied, would not have worked anyway, but is saved at the last moment, because (and the character says this out loud in thuddingly obvious dialog) you blowing shit up because you hate it isn't how you win, you win by keeping what you care about safe.
Then Luke shows up and ghosts Kylo rather than fighting him, because Kylo is very easy to goad into fighting Luke, because Kylo hates Luke. This gives Rey, who flew air cover to protect the Resistance during the battle, time to get the survivors of the Resistance, among whom is Finn, who is her friend, away.
There's a pattern here, one that is echoed throughout Star Wars. Maybe it doesn't make much textual sense to you, but thematically it all tracks.
The First Order won't adopt it because they're way too arrogant to honestly resort to any level of sacrifice to defeat the Resistance
This does constrain the writers because it means they can't put the Rebels into a do or die situation where it would make sense to sacrifice everything in order to succeed. It also presumes that the attack only works with a capital sized ship and they can't afford to throw old freighters that cost a bit more than a used car at the enemy ships in order to do a bunch of damage.
They already were in that situation.
The hyperspace tracker went down with the mega ship. Simple.
Ignoring that hyperspace tech has been around for at least four thousand years in the setting and it would be impossibly idiotic if nobody else in that whole timeframe weaponized a hyperspace attack before, the First Order happily keeps up the tradition of "throw bodies at the problem". The officers wouldn't be up for anything as like piloting a hyperspace attack, but they would order underlings to do it in a heartbeat. They've got a whole stormtrooper army raised on the idea that their only worth is following orders and killing enemies.
Not to mention that droids are perfectly capable of piloting ships in the setting and the First Order is apparently some kind of industrial monster, so it would be chump change for them to throw together a bunch of cheap drone hyperspace missiles and hand them out like candy. Heck, they love hardware solutions to problems, and that would be the end-all solution to enemy ships. They'd be all over it, in a variety of models.
I wonder if there is a quote from the movie to refute that...
"I like where your head's at, but no, they'll only start tracking us from another destroyer"
Like I said, hyperspace tracking means every fight is total elimination. I'm sure this will either be ignored going forward, or the good guys will invent the Trace Buster Buster Buster.
I thought part of the reason they couldn’t just flee is that they only had enough fuel for one jump. If you have fuel for multiple jumps in quick succession the tracking can’t follow.
That was the flagship leaving its base of operation. Unless the Resistance just lets it sit in the garage on an eighth of a tank, I think we saw exactly how many jumps a fully fueled cruiser can do. 2. And each jump takes calculations, so unless you just want to end up between stars without gas, you're going to need time. The First Order showed up in the time it took Poe to get demoted.
Why would the First Order only track with the lead ship, anyway? Splitting up just stymies the entire project?
Yes, I said that already. It will either be ignored, or invented away.
I have wanted to say this for a while now, so don't take this personally Shadowen. You are right in that the movie says this both thematically and literally, and it fits with both the themes of the ST and the OT, Maybe even the PT.
But the bolded is the stupidest fucking idea I have ever heard in my fucking life. It has been pissing me off ever since I heard it in the movie.
If all you do in war is play defense you are going to lose. And lose badly. Now you shouldn't throw you life away. You win a war by making the other son of bitch die gloriously for his country, not dying gloriously for yours. But still surrendering the initiative is just really dumb.
Sorry just had to vent about that. I should know better than to expect realistic military stuff from Star Wars, where after thousands of years of fighting they still haven't figured out that space is three dimensional and you don't have to move away or towards your enemies horizontally.
It doesn't mean staying on defensive, it just means you gotta war smart, not war hard.
You leave the hyperdrive missiles way out at the edge of the system, then transmit the targetting data to them. Then they jump and obliterate the target in a single strike with no opportunity for the enemy to counteract them, because FTL.
Honestly as amazing as the effect was in TLJ I really wish they hadn't done it, as it makes capital ship engagements utterly nonsensical.
Edit: "Hyperdrive missiles," here, is "asteroids we harvested from the Hoth system and strapped engines to."
EDIT: Also, wasn't there a ton of collateral damage other than the direct damage suffered by the capital ship? You'd have to use it when there were no friendly vessels even close to the one you're targetting, because those would be destroyed as well.