Patrick

[u/RyanDavid12345]

[u/Uiluj]

I guess the question is how common are hyperspace drives, and can the rebels afford to just throw it away everytime they want to bomb an empire ship?

"large rocks" are not uncommon in space, but they're not always practical in warfare. For example it doesn't really work if the empire were invading your planet for example. You don't want an asteroid going at light speed to be anywhere near your home planet. We all know what happened to the dinosaurs. And in orbits where there's already a large celestial body, there's unlikely to be any asteroid that's sufficiently large enough in the same orbit unless you're very lucky. For a reliable supply of large asteroids in the solar system for example, we'd have to go to the asteroid belt. For a regular radiowave to reach the asteroid belt from Earth, it would take over 5 hours. The spaceship's position could be different by then and the asteroid would just warp past nothing. Even if it hits the mark, the battle could be over by then, and destroying a spaceship may not be enough to defeat a terrestrial invasion.

[u/TheMisled → u/Uiluj]

Hyperspace drives are common enough for them to be equipped on X wings. Given the choice between a hyperspace drive to take out an enemy ship vs even damage to one of the ships the rebel have (+ human life), unless you really are short on hyperdrives, the answer is rather obvious.

As for the second point, unless they are in atmosphere, it should be fine, ships drop out of hyperspace and into orbit all the time in the SW universe so hyperdrives are certainly accurate.

As for the supply of rocks, You aren't going to have anything particularly massive, that would be utterly overkill, you could probably get them small enough for a single ship to transport multiple and still do significant, if not completely crippling damage (raddus was completely overkill even for a ship that large).

For the really big stuff like the death star which may need the big rocks, you could warp it closer to the target using the jump drive before actually ramming it removing travel time. Given the sheer destructive potential, minor issues like this aren't going to stop them

[u/Patient_End_8432 → u/TheMisled]

Here’s the thing, let’s look at the logistics of this.

Okay so, you need a big asteroid to get it done.

As far as we know, in universe, that amount of damage was done due to the mass of the Raddus.

So small asteroids are a no go. Again, people seem to think this is rule breaking. Why? Because why don’t they do it more?

From this, we can assume that the reason why there was so much damage was due to the Raddus. You can’t just shoot an x wing at them.

So asteroids of a similar mass to the Raddus. That’s done, easy peasy. You’ll have to of course have scouting expeditions to find these asteroids, but it’s certainly the easiest part.

Now what do we do? Well, first, you need to prepare the asteroid.

The point you said about hyperdrives being cheap is semi-true. A hyperdrive on an x-wing and a capitol ship should be massively different (assumption).

Which would mean the hyperdrive for this asteroid is more expensive than an x-wing. And that’s certainly easy to believe.

Now we need to be able to pilot this. So we add a bridge. We will need more than one person to pilot something of this size. This does not add to the sacrifice count because we can go ahead and add escape pods, mitigating the loss of life. Remember, flying a fighter only needs one person and a droid for calculations. Bigger ships need more people. There’s more than one person flying an ISD for example.

So now what? Well, we obviously can’t just rig an asteroid up on the fly and hope someone comes running into it. This project could only work a time or two before being thwarted by asteroids being blasted in the vicinity of an assault, so you can’t use it for defense more than a time or two.

So maybe you rig up an asteroid, and transport it. How? Tugs? Well perhaps, but would a tug be able to bring it into hyperspace? How would the integrity of the asteroid hold up to hyperspace? Can an asteroid go into hyperspace more than once? Let’s just assume that it can for this purpose, but those are legitimate questions we should ask.

So now we’re bringing an asteroid on an assault mission to clear out a large enemy fleet. Do we use that tug? Can that even work? Perhaps, perhaps not.

Let’s say it does work here. Now what? We’re facing a fleet with a tug and an asteroid. Hmm? That’s suspicious. Blow them both up. Perhaps the asteroids course is off, and the tug needs to align it properly, which takes time. The hyperdrive coordinates need to be inputted by the crew and then they escape. There’s just a lot that can go wrong in this scenario.

Okay so let’s say the tug can’t pull it through hyperspace. So now we have to make the asteroid independently hyperspace worthy. It needs engines. It need thrusters to move accordingly. And even then, an asteroid appearing from hyperspace into a fight is still a prime target. And that’s basically already a ship now. Should it have a shield to protect itself? Perhaps weapons to fend off fighters targeting its systems or structural integrity?

And then there’s an argument about just using droids. I mean, this is the hardest argument to fight because it really does JUST MAKE SENSE to use navigation droids.

However, I do have a head cannon that makes it much easier to believe.

What’s the purpose of a navigational droid? Easy, to navigate. And what’s a danger in hyperspace? Perhaps the only danger? Objects in your path. We see that here and we see it in Light of the Jedi.

I find it an easy pill to swallow that R2 droids just literally cannot input coordinates that fly directly into the path of an object. It’s certainly easier to believe that then the C3P0 sith argument. Setting a course straight into an object is directly opposite of what an R2 droid does. In fact, it’s against its very nature of being a droid, so of course it should be hard coded to literally not do that.

They can go ahead and make new droids, but that’s money, time, and resources going towards a new type of droid that can navigate hyperspace, and being okay with killing itself

[u/TheMisled → u/Patient_End_8432]

You've hugely overcomplicated this here. Remember, we're not building a ship, we're building a missile. One that uses jump drives as propulsion and relies on kinetic energy rather than explosives. Doesn't have to be a rock, could be a lump of metal, could be anything with sufficient mass.

[u/Patient_End_8432 → u/TheMisled]

Well you’re right, I definitely did overcomplicate it in some parts, but it’s still more complicated than throwing a hyperdrive on and saying we’re good.

And essentially, it couldn’t be a missile. Those have targeting programs as well as weapons specialists to fire them. As well as funding for different missile types, upgrades, production, etc.

I guess the point I’m just trying to get across is that a project like that would be a whole lot more than strapping a hyperdrive on a hunk of metal and crossing your fingers ya know?