Star Wars Discussion Thread contains spoilers (and may contain nuts)

[Syt]

Hyperspace should be several hundreds or thousands times the speed of light. Small stones at that speed ought to put the Death star out of commission.

If hyperspace is magical and you don't hit anything in hyperspace, well then, slab an engine on an asteroid and have a droid or a human drop out of hyperspace inside the Death star. If the alternative is that the Death star kills a planet you will find lots of volunteers.

Or don't open that can of worms with lazy writing.

And flank speed is just all out top speed. A canoe has flank speed. A log has flank speed.

Theoretically yes. My head-canon is that this would only work as occasional surprise tactic. Interdiction tech, i.e. the ability to create a mass shadow that prevents others from going to hyperspace, or pulling them out of it, if they're in it, exists in the new canon (interdictor cruiser showed up in Rebels), and if this was used more commonly, surely most capital ships would probably be accompanied by interdictors or have the capability added to their designs.

EDIT: I found it much more puzzling that the First Order is worried about conserving fighters (sending them to attack the fleeing Resistance would be a one way trip due to limited range of fighters), and that there was no clear reason why they didn't use hyperjumps to get around their opponents and cut them off.

[Threviel]

Well. They had a situation where that shit wasn't done. They didn't need to explain it, for magical reasons there are no standoff weapons. They don't need to explain. Unless they of course introduce standoff weapons, then there is a whole lot if stuff about it to explain.

I often find in films that certain obvious tactical choices can't be done for, well, story reasons. In the bad ones they have bad explanations for character actions.

[viper37]

EDIT: I found it much more puzzling that the First Order is worried about conserving fighters (sending them to attack the fleeing Resistance would be a one way trip due to limited range of fighters), and that there was no clear reason why they didn't use hyperjumps to get around their opponents and cut them off.

maybe they have more limited resources than the original Empire did?  They don't want to lose pilots because they can't afford to train new ones yet?  They're still upstarts too, despite having crushed the New Republic, the war is not over.
Or maybe it was easier to just shoot them with the ship's guns.  Who knows.

As for hyperspace jump, maybe they do not want to do a very risky blind microjump with their flagship, with the Emperor - I mean, Supreme Leader, #2 and #3 onboard?  A slight miscalculation and they end up inside the rebel carrier.  Bad guys don't like sacrificing themselves in movies

[viper37]

Assuming you mean why don't DDs attacks aircraft carriers, this isn't comparable since DDs don't have a "hyperspace" setting.

They have flanking speed.

Sorry, didn't read the rest of the desperate fanboi-ism.  When you lead with your chin, it isn't necessary - the rest is predictable.

So destroyers are unable to move faster than an aircraft carrier?
I stand corrected then.

[viper37]

Uggh, never mind. Fan boys will do their fan boy thing.

haters gonna hate

The movie had many flaws.  This wasn't one of them.  It might be one of the two or three readeaming feature of the entire movie.

[grumbler]

So destroyers are unable to move faster than an aircraft carrier?
I stand corrected then.

Generally speaking no, they cannot.  At best, they might have two knots or so.

But the problem isn't catching the carrier, it is surviving to do so.  Even if the carrier is, for some fantastic plot reason, unaccompanied, it is armed with sufficient weapons and fire control to sink the destroyer long before the destroyer can get a ram in.  And even if the destroyer rammed the carrier, its small size and minuscule relative speed means that it isn't going to inflict much damage on the armored hull of the carrier.  This all assumes, of course, that it doesn't have any torpedoes (again, for some fantastic plot reason).

Face it:  plot loopholes are plot loopholes, and bad movies are full of them.  Extraordinarily bad movies combine them with "yo momma" jokes.

[grumbler]

Something that's always bugged me: why is flank speed called flank speed? Google isn't giving me a satisfactory answer.

My own folk etymology is that it's the kind of speed you'd use when trying to flank or avoid getting flanked in a battle?

My understanding is that it comes from the fact that one would spur the flanks of a horse to get it to maximum speed.  The flanking in battle bit makes a lot less sense in a naval context (formations don't have flanks), and makes even less sense when you discover that the White Ensign Navies don't use it.

We used to call emergency engine orders "bendix" because the space beyond ahead flank/back full was filled with the name of the manufacturer, Bendix corp, something like this:

[viper37]

And even if the destroyer rammed the carrier, its small size and minuscule relative speed means that it isn't going to inflict much damage on the armored hull of the carrier.  This all assumes, of course, that it doesn't have any torpedoes (again, for some fantastic plot reason).

yeah, well, we do have to work within the parameters of the movie: not enough torpedoes to bypass the ship's defenses in time and the ships guns are elsewhere, and just as the Rebel ship is turning around the Imperials think it is running away and keep on firing the small escape shuttles.

Had the SSD been firing relentlessly on the Rebel ship, it would never have survived a close encounter, that's why they made the Imperials superbly dumb in all of the movies.  Except Palpatine, maybe.  Just overconfident.

Face it:  plot loopholes are plot loopholes, and bad movies are full of them.  Extraordinarily bad movies combine them with "yo momma" jokes.

My analogy was bad, because I did not know enough about modern navies.

But I did say a destroyer attempting such a manoeuver would be mauled before reaching the carrier, even if it was alone (which would be very unlikely to happen).

I thought a destroyer was way, way faster than a carrier.

I stand corrected, thank you.

[grumbler]

My analogy was bad, because I did not know enough about modern navies.

But I did say a destroyer attempting such a manoeuver would be mauled before reaching the carrier, even if it was alone (which would be very unlikely to happen).

I thought a destroyer was way, way faster than a carrier.

I stand corrected, thank you.

There is the historical account of destroyer HMS Glowworm ramming cruiser KMS Hipper during WW2, if you want to see what actually happens in such cases.

[viper37]

Theoretically yes. My head-canon is that this would only work as occasional surprise tactic. Interdiction tech, i.e. the ability to create a mass shadow that prevents others from going to hyperspace, or pulling them out of it, if they're in it, exists in the new canon (interdictor cruiser showed up in Rebels), and if this was used more commonly, surely most capital ships would probably be accompanied by interdictors or have the capability added to their designs.

Whas it Thrawn who used interdictor cruisers to precisely time his exit from hyperspace so all ships would come out at the same spot at the same time ready to fire.  Otherwise, that kind of synchrocinity seems unable to be achieved by their conventional means.

And was it in the books or in Rebels?

EDIT: I found it much more puzzling that the First Order is worried about conserving fighters (sending them to attack the fleeing Resistance would be a one way trip due to limited range of fighters), and that there was no clear reason why they didn't use hyperjumps to get around their opponents and cut them off.

Bad guys are dumb.

Once the ennemy is destroyed, even out of fuel, the fighters could be towed back in the ship.
I believe they have tractor beams in the SW universed, or they at least have some kind of grappling hook.

No big deal.  The Resistance is crushed, everyone falls in line, what's a few hours more to get the ships and pilot back?

[Syt]

Whas it Thrawn who used interdictor cruisers to precisely time his exit from hyperspace so all ships would come out at the same spot at the same time ready to fire.  Otherwise, that kind of synchrocinity seems unable to be achieved by their conventional means.

And was it in the books or in Rebels?

Not sure. I think in Rebels the main purpose was to prevent Rebels from fleeing and interdicting their hyperspace travel.


I've watched the pilot double episode of Resistance. I was originally rather put off by the art style based on stills and promo material. However, I find in motion it looks pretty damn good to me and the visuals during the race scene were very nice to look at.

The plot was, overall, typical Saturday morning cartoon fair - which IMHO is fine if you introduce the characters. The cast seems likable so far. I found Neeku rather funny - like Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy he takes pretty much everything literally, and doesn't understand sarcasm. At the same time he's a happy, positive nerd. I presume he will not be popular with Languishites.

The episodes have very mediocre scores on IMDB which was a bit of a surprise to me. I found this much easier to watch than the pilots for Rebels or Clone Wars (and in fact, there's some pretty weak episodes in those shows in their respective first seasons) and look forward to seeing more.

[Barrister]

Star Wars IX: The Rise of Skywalker

Trailer is out today.

So does that mean that Rey really is a Skywalker?  It looks like Kylo Ren rebuilds his mask.  Is that the Emperor we hear cackling at the end?

So is JJ Abrams just going to reverse all the narrative changes that Johnson made in 8?

[Barrister]

Oh it's confirmed that was Ian McDiarmid's evil laugh at the end.

[Habbaku]

Probably JJ reversing some of the narrative in some hamfisted way, yeah.

But I don't think he'll make Rey a Skywalker. Though it would make the Rey/Kylo mutual attraction into a Luke/Leia incest situation as well, so it's in keeping with tradition. 

[Barrister]

In trying to understand the title...

What if, in this new universe where there are no Jedis anymore, Skywalker becomes not a name but a title?  The Skywalker Order if you will?

It's either that or Luke's force ghost pops up to say "Ren was lying to you - you're really my daughter".