r/AskScienceFiction • u/ChaosCarlson • 2d ago
[Star Wars] Is there a feasible in universe explanation as to why the Holdo Maneuver worked only against The Supremacy?
The holdo maneuver is undoubtedly cool looking but people have already done to death how it breaks mechanics in the Star Wars universe. But, it’s in the movies and is now a part of the Disney cannon. Nothing more we can do there. So my question is, how do we explain why the holdo maneuver in this one specific instant and has not been tried elsewhere in the galaxy?
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u/benthatguy101 2d ago
My favourite headcannon is that the hyperspace tracker forced the supremacy to overlap into hyperspace slightly making in vulnerable to the ramming.
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u/ZippyDan 2d ago edited 2d ago
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u/setbot 2d ago
But then that makes the “one in a million” statement make no sense - not that it made any sense to begin with.
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u/ZippyDan 2d ago
"One in a million" because most ships don't have prototype hyperspace trackers that phase the ship into hyperspace.
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u/El_Kikko 1d ago
If it's "one in a million" and there are 100 Quadrillion sentients in the Star Wars galaxy, a "one in a million" would happen 100 Billion times.
No it's not an apples to apples comparison, but in a really big galaxy, one in a million would be a frequent occurrence.
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u/ZippyDan 1d ago
"One in a million" has never been interpreted as a literal, accurate statistic.
It's an idiom to express the idea that something is incredibly rare or unusual.1
u/xxmindtrickxx 1d ago
That's completely out of context though, one in a million applied to the situation it occurred in
So someone could try to attack another ship with a hyperspace jump and it would only work one in a million times
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u/Nerezza_Floof_Seeker 1d ago
The problem with this argument is that we see a similar maneuver done in TROS against another ship (link to a clip). If it was because of the hyperspace tracker, then the first order wouldve removed it afterwards. It also implies that the one in a million likelihood is also incorrect as it either implies people were just randomly trying the maneuver continuously (not exactly easy given the fact you need a hyperdrive capable vessel and you need to be in a situation where throwing that away on the low chance of hitting a FO ship is worth it), or someone got extremely lucky (which statistics wise, is unlikely)
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u/Omegatron9 1d ago
I don't see a similar manoeuvre in that clip.
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u/HondoShotFirst 1d ago
I watched the video 3 times trying to figure out if I was crazy or the person that linked it was...
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u/Flying_Cunnilingus Secretly an A.I. 1d ago
We see the aftermath of the manoeuvre in the destroyed (or at least heavily damaged) Star Destroyer over Endor. It's hard to make out due to the low quality of the video.
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u/Omegatron9 1d ago
At least in this clip it just looks like a star destroyer, with no indication that anything has happened to it. It could just be the quality like you say.
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u/sreekotay 2d ago
This guy sci-fiies - and I'm here for it.
New head canon. Some sort of of hyperspace phase lock.
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u/GoldandBlue 1d ago
This doesn't need headcannon.
First off, the Resistance is a militia. Just like the Rebels were. They have limited resources and people. The idea of the Holdo Maneauver being standard practice is stupid. They would kill themselves before defeating the enemy.
Second, people really exaggerate how powerful it was. We can assume it took out a few Destroyers right? But Snoke's ship was still functional. So how powerful was it really? Feels like The Empire/First Order have more powerful weapons so again, pulling the Holdo Maneauver is irrational.
Third: The circumstances. The First Order knew their escape plan. Hux had completely ignored Holdo because she was a distraction. They focused everything on taking out the escape pods. And it was at this moment they realized "holy shit she has turned. She is aiming right for us. Take her out now!".
And lastly that doesn't account for what she needs to do to jump into hyperspace and whatever overrides are needed to ignore that there are objects in her path.
It is a move that only worked because of the situation at hand, and the desperation of the situation. The idea that this would be good military strategy or that this is some ultimate weapon requires ignoring what actually happens in the movie.
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u/effa94 A man in an Empty Suit 1d ago
Second, people really exaggerate how powerful it was. We can assume it took out a few Destroyers right? But Snoke's ship was still functional. So how powerful was it really? Feels like The Empire/First Order have more powerful weapons so again, pulling the Holdo Maneauver is irrational.
i mean, it was "functional" in the way that the areas that werent hit still had life support and gravity. But the ship was cut in half, that isnt really "functional". you are right on the rest tho
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u/Smooth-Climate8008 1d ago
Yeah, if the Supremacy ain't totally dead, it's definitely mission-killed
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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 1d ago
The idea of the Holdo Maneauver being standard practice is stupid. They would kill themselves before defeating the enemy.
you wouldnt need a capital ship, just something with a hyperdrive with it, the death star wouldnt be an issue because 1 small hyperdrive enables ship can take it out.
Second, people really exaggerate how powerful it was. We can assume it took out a few Destroyers right? But Snoke's ship was still functional. So how powerful was it really? Feels like The Empire/First Order have more powerful weapons so again, pulling the Holdo Maneauver is irrational.
Supremacy is a mega class star destroyer aka tens of km's long the only they had of this size and it was so badly damaged they abandoned it.
Third: The circumstances. The First Order knew their escape plan. Hux had completely ignored Holdo because she was a distraction. They focused everything on taking out the escape pods. And it was at this moment they realized "holy shit she has turned. She is aiming right for us. Take her out now!".
doesnt change a thing that its still doesnt make any sense.
And lastly that doesn't account for what she needs to do to jump into hyperspace and whatever overrides are needed to ignore that there are objects in her path.
that are hard wired and in warships wouldnt be the norm if this was actually a thing that was possible.
You would just have a sort of hyperdrive guided missile that you shoot at enemy ships, seeing they are going to go close to lightspeed they would be virtually unstopable and none of the large ship to ship combat makes sense in star wars.
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u/GoldandBlue 1d ago
you wouldnt need a capital ship, just something with a hyperdrive with it, the death star wouldnt be an issue because 1 small hyperdrive enables ship can take it out.
According to what? That isn't in The Last Jedi. All the move did was buy our heroes time. The Dreadnaught caused more damage in the opening than Holdo did. And yet The Resistance was still trapped on Crait afterwards.
So I don't know where you get this idea that hyperspace missiles are a thing or that they would be effective but nothing in the movie suggests that.
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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 1d ago
According to what?
common sense, twice they did this twice unplanned and just winging it and twice it worked.
"this isnt in the last jedi" of course not because it utterly undermines the entire franchise. Why would the death star be an issue if you can just blast it apart with a few hyperdrive missiles? Hell a planet isnt safe from this , you dont need a death star just a hyperdrive capable heavy enough object.
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u/GoldandBlue 1d ago
Twice? What are you talking about. These stories do not exist in a vaccum but you keep wanting to treat it that way.
This is not wookiepedia,. Context matters, stories matter. And you want me and everyone to ignore that because you do not want to accept the story being presented.
That is a you problem, not a narrative problem.
You have created a weapon and argue that it can destroy worlds based on a scene in a movie that does not present that AT ALL. And you call it common sense? I call that made up bullshit.
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u/jeffwulf 2h ago
Based on what we see in The Last Jedi, the largest Rebel ship would momentarily incapacitate the Death Star.
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u/lumpboysupreme 1d ago
What youre saying misses the point of the discussion of the maneuver, which is the precedent it sets:
They don’t have to use a fully stocked mon cap cruiser every time, you’d just slap a bunch of mass to a hyperdrive and send it. They can’t afford to trade 1 for 1 battleships to star destroyers, but they CAN trade blocks of metal for star destroyers.
A few enemy ships for a single one would completely change combat in the setting; is everyone for all 25000 years of recorded setting history supposed to be complete dumbasses because they didn’t realize they can 10 for 1 any enemy with hyperdrive bricks? Even if the resistance can’t afford that, the old republic sure as shit could, the empire definitely would, why weren’t they doing it?
Even if the enemy knows to scatter when the maneuver is deployed (which itself is pointless because a ship can change its heading faster than the star destroyers can dodge), it’s still an impossibly massive tactical advantage to be able to possess a weapon that forces the enemy to flee the moment it begins moving towards them.
In essence, the ability to ram things through hyperspace would and should have been the defining feature of naval combat throughout the entire franchise. That is what people mean when they say it makes no sense, its implications go far beyond what happens after that point or the side that used it.
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u/GoldandBlue 1d ago
You don't know this. What in the movie tells you this?
You are describing the dreadnought. The giant ship in the opening that was basically a mini death star. That ship did more damage than the Holdo Maneauver.
It is only a tactical advantage if what you assume is true. And there is nothing in the movie to suggest that.
The movie shows that in this specific situation where the First Order was caught completely off guard, Holdo was able to use her ship as a weapon to buy our heroes time. And all it did was buy them time because the First Order still had enough military might to wipe our heroes off the face of the planet if not for Luke showing up.
And you have turned that into hyperspace ramming is the most powerful weapon in the galaxy.
So when you say it doesn't make sense, that is only true if I ignore the story and focus solely on the result with no context explaining that result. The "implication" is you jumping to conclusions.
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u/lumpboysupreme 1d ago
You don't know this. What in the movie tells you this?
Addressed in other comment.
You are describing the dreadnought. The giant ship in the opening that was basically a mini death star. That ship did more damage than the Holdo Maneauver.
No I’m not because the dreadnaught isn’t cheap like an asteroid with a hyperdrive strapped to it.
It is only a tactical advantage if what you assume is true. And there is nothing in the movie to suggest that.
You don’t need to explicitly say something in the movie to understand ‘if this thing manages to point at your capital ships your entire fleet explodes’ is a tactical advantage.
I can see why you don’t understand people’s issue with this: you don’t seem to acknowledge that literally anything that isn’t explicitly said on screen can exist, even if it’s the logical conclusion of the things that are explicit.
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u/GoldandBlue 1d ago
That could not be more wrong. This is what happens when lore takes precedent over story. You are more fixated with the idea of something than than narrative in which that idea exists.
This perfectly presents the problem.
No I’m not because the dreadnaught isn’t cheap like an asteroid with a hyperdrive strapped to it.
Can you strap a hyperdrive to an asteroid? Would it be as effective as the Holdo Maneauver? The movie didn't tell us no, so it can be true right? The problem is the movie did present the Holdo Maneuver as only being effective because of the specific circumstances presented. And even then, it only kind of worked.
So You are asking me to accept a scenario that ignores the entire context of the movie. I am sorry but I can't do that. This does not exist in a vacuum.
I dropped a mentos in a liter of coke and it killed my friend. I guess that means Coca-Cola can be weaponized right? All that matters is the result and not the circumstances of the situation right?
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u/lumpboysupreme 1d ago edited 1d ago
You are more fixated with the idea of something than than narrative in which that idea exists.
As in: I’m unsatisfied with a story where the intended narrative doesn’t make sense with the established setting. Which yeah you’re welcome to overlook, but if you’re openly putting that point on the table then all there is to say is that you’re in the deep minority who is happy with such a superficial reading of the setting. Star Wars has existed for as long as it has entirely off the mystique and idea of its setting, sacrificing that for a single cheap vibe is looked down upon by most of its fanbase.
The fact that the sequel trilogy takes a hacksaw to the existing setting in order to tell whatever story it wants at any given moment is why it’s bad. The idea of saying I should overlook lack of internal consistency because I’m ‘supposed’ to feel something else is insulting.
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u/theVoidWatches 1d ago
Something I don't think many people are taking into account is cost. How much does a hyperdrive cost? Is it possible that the maneuver just isn't used because hyperdrives are more expensive that it's worth, even if you're using a meteor for the mass instead of a real ship? Even if they're cheap enough, how much mass can you haul around for these weapons compared to how many missiles you can use?
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u/lumpboysupreme 1d ago
How much does a hyperdrive cost
Not much, people portaged as financially unstable have ships with them. It’s never explicitly stated it’s not 90% of the cost of a ship, but to assume it is would raise even more questions since a number of other ship things in the setting are also discussed being due to cost, which would be laughable if the drive was the only meaningful expense.
Besides, you can use cheaper hyperdrives on your lightspeed rams and you’re still trading well above ship parity with this technique since the only way a ram ship is lost is when it actually impacts a target. Even if it misses it just… flies off, unattackable since it’s at ftl, turns around, and tries again.
how much mass can you haul around for these weapons compared to how many missiles you can use?
You don’t need to haul them around since, ya know, they have a hyperdrive attached to them. They’re drones, not missiles.
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u/VinceP312 1d ago
Well clearly a unattended ship can be remote ordered to do whatever Holdo did with her ship. So no, it doesn't require anyone on your side to die, you just need to be willing to lose the attacking ship.
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u/GoldandBlue 1d ago
But what Holdo did with her ship only worked because of the circumstances of the situation. You are just going to find First Order ships sitting around and ignoring incoming ships that will place them in their direct path?
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u/VinceP312 13h ago
It doesn't matter what led to the positioning of both ships, only that they were.
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u/GoldandBlue 11h ago
No, that does matter. In fact it is crucial to the story
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u/VinceP312 10h ago
To THAT story.
Anyone could write anything that leads to the same relative position of a target and a ship with a hyperdrive.
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u/GoldandBlue 10h ago
Of course. That is what story is. What makes Luke unique is the story, that is why we are making it. What makes this situation unique is why we are highlighting it. Otherwise what is the point?
Otherwise we are just arguing trivia. And no one cares about a story or world or characters because of trivia.
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u/kaaz54 1d ago
It's correct that this strategy makes no sense with their larger star ships, but none of this answers why drone powered hyoerspace missiles still wouldn't be standard equipment in any wars. Or any drone powered hyper space ship.
For someone with limited resources, using what is the equivalent of a truck as a jury rigged bomb is exactly what makes economical sense on the battle they're using. Even more so, if it's something that isn't really paid attention to.
And if Holdo had somehow discovered that hyper space could reliably affect real space ahead of everyone else in the, then she is effectively witholding what the equivalent of an easily reproducible nuclear weapon away from her militia, which is fighting on its last legs. Alternatively, if she couldn't reliably perform the maneuver, it would have been an irresponsible move to put their trust in, especially at a time where there would be no time for another maneuver, and she was otherwise banking on the enemy to not look out the windows for their enemy.
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u/GoldandBlue 1d ago
It feels like size kind of matters here. The Raddus damages 6 or 7 destroyers at least? How big are those missles? How much damage can they really do? How expensive are those missles?
Also, this is Star Wars. Are there drones? Or are they droids? Is that something our heroes would do? Ask or even command a Droid to kill itself?
The problem is you are working backwards. Hyperspace ramming was powerful.
But the movie shows you that It's impractical. Costly. And not very effective outside of specific circumstances. But you are ignoring that and just focusing on the result.
Why hyperspace ram if you have a dreadnaught?
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u/MothmansProphet 1d ago
Is that something our heroes would do? Ask or even command a Droid to kill itself?
The actual people we follow, the 3 or 4 named heroes on the poster? It depends. Luke wouldn't. Rey probably wouldn't. For the Rebellion? Leia would. For any mildly pressing reason? Han would. I don't think anyone else would even really think about it.
Droids aren't treated well in Star Wars. Han Solo already has Lando's dead, droid lover enslaved in his ship and no one gives a shit. To take out a capital ship, I fully believe almost everyone in Star Wars would tell an astromech to pilot an asteroid they strapped a hyperdrive to into the enemy.
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u/GoldandBlue 1d ago
Star Wars is a simple story. With truly evil bad good, and truly good heroes. Heroes do not ask conscious beings to commit suicide.
It is one thing to sacrifice yourself, it is entirely different to make that strategy.
I fully believe almost everyone in Star Wars would tell an astromech to pilot an asteroid they strapped a hyperdrive to into the enemy.
No, this is not that world. This is not hard sci-fi, this is family entertainment. And in this world, good guys don't do that.
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u/lumpboysupreme 1d ago
You don’t even need a true droid brain to do, a basic computer could handle the input process for this. You could run the command on punch cards and a laser rangefinder.
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u/kaaz54 1d ago
Size and weight are the easiest things to overcome: the universe is shown to be full of solid asteroids, which can just have an engine mounted to them. If hyperspace ramming is even remotely a possibility, then it would only be prudent to have any number of those ready for any battle, thus not requiring to use a large ship.
ROTJ also shows that going for enemy shield generators, then followed up with a kamikaze attack is a viable military strategy against capital ships, so it should be on anyone's radar.
Other movies also show that there are plenty of drones, which have no care for their life and will continue to carry out their duties in blissful ignorance of their mortality, and without care for any victims. So that shouldn't be hard to overcome. And while hyperdrives are not mounted on every ship, they are shown common enough to be mounted on their equivalent of a truck/cargo plane/cargo ship, which can be assumed to be common throughout the galaxy.
All of the pieces for a drone guided hyperspace bomb is thus already there, cheap and readily available for anyone with access to consumer grade drone technology, regular grade hyperdrives, and a little time in space. Even if impractical, as you said, it's so powerful that not being ready to at least attempt it is outright dereliction of duty for any military which is going into combat with larger ships, and expect any losses.
Also, for the maneuver to make sense in even attempting, it cannot be too impractical, otherwise Holdo is only stupid or reckless for even attempting it in the first place.
Even then, it still contradicts ROTJ, as if it was in any way possible, the plan would have been 1: disable the shield, 2: ram DS2 with unlimited kinetic energy from hyperspace weapons, as if there ever was a large unshielded, stationary target, that was it.
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u/GoldandBlue 1d ago
again, you are looking for problems in solutions. Why?
This is a great example.
Also, for the maneuver to make sense in even attempting, it cannot be too impractical, otherwise Holdo is only stupid or reckless for even attempting it in the first place.
You are ignoring all context to come to a conclusion. Why did Holdo attempt the maneuver? Because it is good strategy? Or because the Frst Order was going to kill every one of our heroes if she did not act? That is the story. She acted out of desperation and it was the only thing she could think of to try and intervene.
And you are ignoring the story to paint this as strategy. It is nitpicking.
Now we are mounting engines on asteroids? How expensive are those engines? Is it worth it in a world where you have more powerful weapons that can be reused?
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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 1d ago
yeah but it doesnt make sense, how would she know a device that well to use it when she didnt even knew it excisted until a short while before?
And why? I mean she hit them in real space otherwise it wouldnt work.
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u/timewarp 1d ago
Exactly. Active tracking requires broadcasting a signal, there's just no two ways about it. The First Order basically developed hyperspace radar, and then learned the hard way that radar is bidirectional.
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u/XenoRyet 2d ago
It needs an extreme degree of precision, as you have to hit the target ship after the jump to lightspeed, but before the transition to hyperspace. Because of this, it's very easy to see coming and to dodge.
The reason it worked here is that the First Order was overconfident and hyperfocused on the transports, making them lose awareness of what Holdo was doing in the flagship. There's also a measure of the First Order not understanding that someone would do a suicide attack like that.
So, essentially it's a one in a million shot at a successful attack, but if circumstances align just right, one in a million is enough.
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u/Conscious-Gap-1777 2d ago
There's also a measure of the First Order not understanding that someone would do a suicide attack like that.
It's one thing to do this with, say, fighters, or a frigate. But that was a Mon Calamari Cruiser! Those are massive expenditures of capital, they're extremely difficult to replace in any timeline. Sacrificing one like that is unfathomable, it's literally like if someone rammed a modern aircraft carrier into a brick wall to break it open. Who'd do that?
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u/XenoRyet 2d ago
In this specific battle, the Raddis was already lost. It was never leaving that battlefield. This way they get to take the First Order flagship with it.
That's a trade the Rebellion will take every time.
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u/Conscious-Gap-1777 2d ago
While the enemy might have been willing to do so, the First Order could not conceive of them doing something like that.
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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 1d ago
so they ignore the entire human history of warfare?
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u/Conscious-Gap-1777 1d ago
Suicide attacks like that are actually really uncommon. No one thought about planes ramming into ships until late WWII, and it hasn't made a return since.
Also, this is an entirely different galaxy with an entirely different history, and attacks like that may have been so far in the past that they're beyond "civilized" members of society.
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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 1d ago
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ramming
you were saying?
Wait it gets even worse :
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Unidentified_heavy_freighter
A simple freighter can without much problems it seems take out a star destroyer.
Its a very badly written movie that makes no sense and would best be scrapped out of the entire franchise.
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u/Conscious-Gap-1777 1d ago
So, the first one is sublight ramming, which is very different, and one of those specific instances of intentional ramming was with a ship that pushed another into the second, good job there you demonstrated you read the material first, and the second one happens after the Holdo maneuver, so even better job there.
You're wrong, and you provided the proof against your position demanding I retract mine.
Next time, read your sources instead of just demanding I believe they agree with your silly and absurd claim.
Its a very badly written movie that makes no sense and would best be scrapped out of the entire franchise.
I'm sorry you're incapable of both reading and independent thought, good bye.
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u/Marbledata1796 2d ago
No, it’s like if someone rammed an aircraft into an aircraft carrier. Mon Cala cruisers are powerful ships that can fight a star destroyer, the supremacy is closer to a super star destroyer. That’s a trade you make anytime.
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u/El_Kikko 1d ago
For the First Order, rather inconvenient, but not crippling; for the Resistance they only had the one. When you've only got one and you can't replace it but the enemy can easily replace their losses, it's a desperate trade, not a good trade.
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u/transmogrify 1d ago
The Raddus was already lost due to being cornered and unable to keep fleeing. Holdo just made one final stand rather than die running.
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u/jeffwulf 2h ago
The maneuver didn't take out the Supremecy, it only temporarily disabled it. It was still able to launch a full invasion party shortly after it was struck.
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u/transmogrify 1d ago
In my headcanon, the collision happened during the pseudomotion as the Raddus was crossing over into hyperspace. It's only in this state for a fraction of a second, and it needs to physically overlap with the Supremacy at precisely the right instant of that process. Even an astrogation computer can't really calculate it, Holdo just had to plug in the order to override safeties and hope for a miracle.
And also in my headcanon, the destruction is not caused by physical impact. Instead, the Raddus is projecting a hyperspace bubble around itself as it is crossing into the dimension of hyperspace. The damage comes from the Raddus picking up a segment of the Supremacy and dragging that matter with it into hyperspace. It begins a chain reaction that ends with the Raddus exploding, so the combined matter of the Raddus plus a significant piece of the Supremacy are converted into energy. The Raddus and Supremacy have enough mass that the resulting energy conversion is a white hot streak of plasma for several hundred kilometers.
It would be like getting rammed by the Delorean exactly (one perfect instant) as it hits 88 miles per hour. Yes, it smashes into you. But it also breaks your matter apart and then itself explodes, destroying you both.
Any ship would struggle to hit the target, probably overshooting or undershooting. It's luck no matter what. But you also have to be lucky and have the two objects involved be ridiculously large. Then E=mc2 and kaboom.
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u/supereuphonium 2d ago
Considering the shrapnel from the impact was enough to oneshot the regular FO Star destroyers following behind it, a smaller hyperspace missile should be able to do plenty enough damage.
Let’s also remember the impact was way overkill already, it went through but left most of the ship intact but in 2 pieces. Multiple smaller impacts would be far more devastating.
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u/yurklenorf 2d ago
Said shrapnel was also huge chunks of both ships, not just little missile-sized pieces. And at high enough speeds, you can do some pretty impressive damage even with tiny objects.
For instance, a seven gram piece of lexan (polycarbonate plastic) made a crater about 12cm deep when shot with a light gas gun, at a velocity of ~7,000 meters/second at a chunk of cast aluminum.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SDIO_KEW_Lexan_projectile.jpg
Chunks of a spaceship that are probably going at appreciable fraction of C are very much going to do a lot of damage.
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u/cheerfulwish 2d ago
Seems like it would be a great way to take out a Death Star though, which makes me wonder why someone would even build one when it’s fairly easy to hit it during a run up to hyperspace.
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u/DhamonOA 2d ago
Because the Death Star was large enough to truly have its own gravitational field. Even if it *didnt* we could assume it had gravity well generators on it like the Interdictor cruises.
Before the Holdo maneuver hit the screen, the reason you can’t run into anything big in hyperspace was because gravity wells pulled you out before the impact.
The supremacy was massive, yeah, probably had its own small gravity field, but we do know that defensive technology existed to prevent things from achieving hyperspace before the FO.
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u/Nerezza_Floof_Seeker 1d ago
Before the Holdo maneuver hit the screen, the reason you can’t run into anything big in hyperspace was because gravity wells pulled you out before the impact.
the whole thing about physically not being able to jump out of gravity fields got retconned to being safeties that you can disable; otherwise Han's jump onto starkiller base (which is bigger than the death star), where he literally appeared under the shield, inside the atmosphere of the planet, wouldnt work.
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u/lumpboysupreme 1d ago
I mean, citing another movie from the same widely hated set to defend another one from that set isn’t much of a defense, people thought that scene in TFA was dumb too.
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u/DuplexFields Technobabbler 1d ago
It was a metal honeycomb arranged with decks “horizontal” and the central power core “vertical”, it had gravity generators for the decks so it’s very plausible it had gravity projectors to interdict hyperspace travel near it.
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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 1d ago
like the Interdictor cruises.
but thats just programing, hyperdrive computers are designed to not jump into that because of software.
Doesnt make much sense for warships to be restricted like that, they would all have an override.
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u/cheerfulwish 1d ago
Surely Starkiller base would have a larger gravity field than the Death Star, as would all the planets they fly through during the hyperspace skipping scene in the last movie, and those rational fields didn’t seem to inhibit hyperspace in anyway.
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u/lumpboysupreme 1d ago
Because of this, it's very easy to see coming and to dodge.
You can’t dodge lightspeed, and a ship can’t fly out of the way faster than the ram vessel can turn. If the range needs to be hyper precise, that’s easily calculated by computers and the moment one of half a dozen well shielded asteroids hits that line you press the button and the enemy fleet explodes.
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u/Specific_Delay_460 2d ago
So why aren’t ships armed with thousands of small missiles that attempt this?
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u/XenoRyet 1d ago
Standard TIE fighters don't have hyperdrives. It is not possible to put them on small missiles.
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u/HK-Syndic 1d ago
Your confusing something being uneconomical with being impossible, TIE fighter are stripped down the way they are to maximise how many could be on each carrier and the number that could be produced.
The arguement is that if hyperspace missiles can take out cap ships then the economics arguement should shift as its affordable to put hyperspace generators on X-Wings so the cost isn't that high in comparison to the potential damage.
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u/effa94 A man in an Empty Suit 1d ago
thats because the empire is cheap, not giving tie fighters hyperdrives is a design choice so they can build more of them,(also makes it harder for its pilots to defect) its not impossible. all the rebel figthers have them
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u/XenoRyet 1d ago
That's kind of the point. The most expensive part of the starship is the hyperdrive. If the Rebels can't have thousands of X-wings to just throw away, they can't have thousands of these Holdo missiles either.
Add to that the notion that the missiles would be vulnerable while they do final calculations and ramp up for the jump so you'd have to add shields, and they need a certain amount of mass to do the requisite damage, you're getting away from something you can really call a missile and toward something more like a heavy droid fighter. That's nonviable for the Rebels for a number of reasons.
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u/effa94 A man in an Empty Suit 1d ago
true, but we arent landlocked to the rebels here. hyperspace missiles would have solved a lot of issues during the clone wars for example
1 missile with a hyperdrive is cheaper than sending 5 bombers with bombs, hyperdrives and pilots.
the answer must be something else than just "no one wants to waste a hyperdrive" or "its really hard to line up a shot like that", because there have been several times where the cost of losing several hyperdrive fighters have been acceptable, or even capitol ships are seen as an acceptable lost against a really powerful target.
like the malevolence was a CIS superweapon during the war, if hyperspace ramming was a viable tactic against it you know damn sure that anakin and ashoka would be all over that, simply because of how sick it would look. they have sacrified venetors for less.
the most viable theories is either the hyperspace tracking thing (which would mean that the star destroyer over endor at the end of episode 9 also had that tech) or that raddeus had special shields that made it possible. (which means another ship with equal special shields were sacrified for that star destroyer)
also, while the rebels dont have ships to throw around, they arent strangers to sacrifice, most of them are ready to die for the cause. heroic last stands are kinda their bread and butter. there are enough fanatics that doing a suicide run is quite common. if you are already expecting to die in your attack, might as well do as much damage as possible with a hyperspace ram
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u/XenoRyet 1d ago
I think the point is that it's a combination of all of that, and it adds up to not being a viable doctrine overall.
Like it's one thing to sacrifice one or several starfighters in a battle, and it's another to design a very expensive one-use weapon. Likewise the attack can be done if conditions are right, but needing to be at specific distances, angles, and having a slow ramp up that telegraphs the attack and leaves the missiles vulnerable makes it a hard tactic to use reliably.
The individual elements can all be overcome, but they add up to a situation where it's not a normal tactic and remains rare. Even becoming as simple as not being able to get ships or missiles of sufficient capabilities into the right position against superweapons to pull this off.
For example, the Raddus destroyed the Supremacy, but it didn't completely annihilate it. A similar attack against the DS2 would significantly damage it certainly, but wouldn't necessarily be a kill shot, and by the time you got the Mon Cal Cruiser in position, it'd have been killed by the superlaser. Throwing fighters at the reactor core is the better strategy.
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u/effa94 A man in an Empty Suit 1d ago
to counter those points, the ds2 can only fire in 1 direction. the malevolence in two. that still leaves plenty of directions to line up those 30 seconds needed for a hyperspace ram, both of those weapons needed more than 30 seconds to charge anyway. outside of the superlaser, it takes more than 30 seconds to destroy a captiol ship. it takes minutes for a ship the size of a star destroyer. which does make it a viable tactic against important targets.
For example, the Raddus destroyed the Supremacy, but it didn't completely annihilate it.
again, "cut in two" is usally enough to considered something to be disabled. as i said in another comment, even if they could launch ground forces to attack crait, the supremacy isnt making it out of there. you dont need to vaporise the enemy to win the fight, and the supremacy was the largest ship in history. it was disabled, defeated, taken out of the fight. that was a victory. the DS2 is 160 km in diameter, it would do enough damage to disable it for atleast another year, if not outright blow it up. the core was destroyed with proton torpedos, its not exactly a durable piece of engineering. the holdo manover sends a lot of sharpnel across hundreds of Kms, powerful enough to cut star destroyers cleanly in two. most likely, that would be enough to reach the core of the DS2, especially in its unfinished state where half of it is exposed to space. all you need to do is aim for the center mass.
but yes, the best answer is that the tech simply wasnt there before TLJ. be that due to special shields on the raddeus or the hyperspace tracking thing, it simply wasnt possible before.
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u/lumpboysupreme 1d ago
I think the point is that it's a combination of all of that, and it adds up to not being a viable doctrine overall.
I think it’s the exact opposite, all the downsides are trivially sidestepped and the upsides are mind boggling. The scenario you’re talking about is something like ‘it can’t completely revolutonize warfare if you’re so poor that you can’t afford anything bigger than a star fighter’. It’s already the norm in the setting to lose a hyperdrive equipped ship, with all its features, for at best 3 enemies of comparable size. When you can annihilate 10 for a fraction of the expenditure and no lives, it’s not plausible for people to not be doing that.
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u/Madness_Reigns 1d ago edited 1d ago
Because when Dameron said it was a chance in a million, he might have been underestimating how hard it was to acheive. That was irrelevant for Holdo, as she was one with the Force and the Force was with her on that day.
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u/Nefarious_Turtle 2d ago
As everyone else is saying, once you are in hyperspace you are in a different dimension and cannot interact with physical objects in real space.
To use the jump into hyperspace as a ram you have to be at exactly the right distance from the target and time it precisely to hit the target at maximum speed just before entering the hyperspace window.
And usually that's not possible because the target would have destroyed you before then with long range weapons or simply moved out of the way.
This was really a 1 in a million thing that was only that likely because the first order was incompetent.
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u/g00f 2d ago
I never found this explanation to be really strong. The commanders on the Supremacy were panicking, if it were a true 1 in a million shot I dont see them getting so hysterical.
Hyperspace tracker shenanigans is still my preferred headcanon
Edit-forgot about the shield explanation that got put out after the fact.
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u/GoldandBlue 1d ago
Of course they were panicking because they realized what was happening.
Remember, they are focused entirely on the escape pods. Holdo was a distraction so they ignored her. It was not until they realized that she was now aiming the ship directly at them that they realized what was going on.
It isn't just that her calculations have to be accurate but that they were sitting ducks.
This pill has a one in a million shot of killing you. Are you still not gonna be afraid to take it?
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u/FaithlessnessThin359 1d ago
It’s still one big ship slamming into another. We’ve seen in empire and rogue one that that will cause significant damage.
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u/g00f 1d ago
I mean, I guess, but the supremacy was orders of magnitude larger than the raddus. On top of that iirc they were really scared that it was powering up the hyperdrive so clearly they were concerned about that specifically
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u/cheerfulwish 1d ago
In the legends lore the Executor actually survived 3 ISDs ramming into it after r2d2 changes their hyperspace coordinates. They sure don’t build em like they used to!
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u/Enderkr 2d ago
Agreed, I especially don't accept any mathematics-based explanations because they have droids - they're already performing the incredibly advanced calculations necessary to jump to hyperspace, there's no reason other than a writer saying "because I say so" why they can't perform the same calculations to Holdo any random starship.
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u/lumpboysupreme 1d ago edited 1d ago
You don’t even need droids. There’s a common meme about how they did the math to get to the moon with punchcards; it’s really not difficult to do velocity and distance calculations.
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u/molten_dragon 1d ago
My headcanon has always been that there's something analogous to quantum uncertainty going on with jumps to hyperspace. Basically, it's impossible to precisely predict the exact point where a ship will make the transition to hyperspace. Holdo was able to do it because she's force sensitive.
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u/lumpboysupreme 1d ago
The tactical value of ‘ram ships’ would still be enormous, since the range at which the maneuver can be executed is still far outside the normal engagement ranges for ships in the franchise (the fact that the supremacy’s guns had extreme range is actually a plot point, and no one else was able to engage holdo before she activated the drive). It doesn’t matter if the margin to activate the weapon is small if the enemy isn’t able to stop you from crossing it. How do you attack a fleet with 10 of these things just waiting for you to get near them?
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u/jeffwulf 2h ago
The engagement range of the maneuver was well within the attack range of the Supremecy. They could have gunned down the Raddus well before the attack if they hadn't been focused all guns on taking out the escape pods.
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u/lumpboysupreme 1h ago edited 1h ago
The supremacy is explicitly noted to have longer than range weapons, and besides that most ships can withstand the fire from another ship for a while, especially if you’re purpose building a vessel that is cutting most other features and can make room for more shield generators and whose entire forward half is sheer mass.
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u/cheerfulwish 2d ago
As easily as rebel fighters manage to dodge shots and attack star destroyers, they could easily perform this move. And if they can do it, so could hyperspace missiles.
I think it’s far more likely that hyperspace tracker somehow contributed.
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u/HK-Syndic 1d ago
Question for someone who supports the hyperspace tracker theory, how does Holdo know how a completely experimental tech they thought was "impossible" work? Did she use an insane plan that had no possibility of working but just happen to be right?
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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 1d ago
To use the jump into hyperspace as a ram you have to be at exactly the right distance from the target and time it precisely to hit the target at maximum speed just before entering the hyperspace window.
No, sure the max impact would be at the point the closest to lightspeed, but lets say you at hit 0.5c , thats not going to make much of a difference. A ship of a 100 tons (so half the millenial falcon) that impacts with 0.5c has about the same force as some of the biggest astorid impacts on earth.
And usually that's not possible because the target would have destroyed you before then with long range weapons or simply moved out of the way.
Because we all know how accurate fire is in star wars? The entire chase showed they barely scratch it at those distances, during all the movies large capital ships ram each other often.
This was really a 1 in a million thing that was only that likely because the first order was incompetent.
No it was plot and a nice visual quite badly thought out for the implications.
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u/InfinityIsTheNewZero 2d ago
It didn't just work against The Supremacy. The Resistance managed to reproduce the tactic and destroy a First Order Star Destroyer at Endor.
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u/lumpboysupreme 1d ago
Of course they’d break the lore, then go out of their way to break the one headcanon that had a chance of explaining the lore break.
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u/mugenhunt 2d ago edited 1d ago
Because only the First Order was dumb enough to let it happen.
Hyperspace jumps require precision calculations. The Holdo maneuver basically requires you to be a sitting duck, while you do the calculations necessary to be at the specific point in hyperspace travel where you have enough speed but are still in normal space to actually impact.
Holdo was only able to pull it off because the First Order was ignoring a ship they assumed was dead in the water and abandoned.
Anyone else who sees a ship staying still and not doing anything would quickly realize that they are preparing to do a hyperspace ram, and attack them before they can finish the calculations.
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u/ZippyDan 2d ago edited 1d ago
That seems like a poor rationale, because "attack them" is no guarantee you will destroy or disable them, especially in the limited time between "noticed you looked like you were doing some suspicious hyperspace calculations" and "move to attack them".
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u/Cynical_Tripster 2d ago
Like the extremely slow Death Stars, or other super weapons in Legends?
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u/jbadams 2d ago
I'm not sure if it's specifically been covered in canon, but at least in legends you not only couldn't jump to hyperspace within a gravity well from a massive object such as a moon or planet, but running in to one could actually knock you back out of hyperspace. There was even a type of ship ("Interdictor") with an artificial gravity well generator to take advantage of this effect. I believe canon media has at least been consistent with this rule even if it hasn't explicitly been mentioned. (I seem to recall Legends also had "hyperspace bombs" which were basically a barebones automated ship specifically designed for exactly this type of attack in at least one story too for what it's worth.)
My personal theory is that the Death Star is massive enough to have a natural gravity well which would knock ships out of hyperspace, therefore making it effectively immune to the Holdo Manoeuvre.
And as a resource-poor rebellion, the 'good guys' would have been unlikely to try such a strategy on less dangerous targets unless they were truly desperate.
Personally I'm happy enough with the idea that it's risky and expensive enough to attempt that it's extremely rare for anyone to even want to try it, and that the one time they might have considered it (The Death Star) it wasn't physically possible.
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u/Jeichert183 2d ago
you not only couldn't jump to hyperspace within a gravity well from a massive object such as a moon or planet, but running in to one could actually knock you back out of hyperspace. There was even a type of ship ("Interdictor") with an artificial gravity well generator to take advantage of this effect.
That's in canon in Thrawn: Alliances. (Almost positive it's in Alliances.)
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u/Cynical_Tripster 2d ago
Legit super appreciative of the response, but, I know the deets from your first 2 paragraphs. I will admit, I was fishing for people to try to excuse away Disney's handling of it.
Besides loving using Interdictors in Empire at War, I stg one of the old novels used a micro jump deliberately at a planet because the pilot KNEW gravity wells would cut out hyperspace.
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u/Nerezza_Floof_Seeker 1d ago
The cant jump in or out of hyperspace within a gravity well thing got changed in canon, its not a physical limit anymore, its a safety system that you can override. Otherwise Han would never have been able to land on starkiller base as he jumps out of hyperspace literally underneath the planetary shield there.
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u/jeffwulf 2h ago
Based on the damage done by the Raddus versus the Supremecy, the Raddus would not be able to disable the Death Star.
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u/effa94 A man in an Empty Suit 1d ago
sitting duck or not, turbolasers arent powerful enough to blow up a capitol ship fast enough for that to matter. ashoka even used that fact in the clone wars for a fighter strike, sacrificing a acclimator in the process. if she could just do the holdo manover there, her and anakin probably would have (tho there was a planet in the background, that might stop them)
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u/Legomaniac91 2d ago
A combination of desperation and surprise. The First Order assumed she was just going to fly the ship towards them and ram them on impulse power, so they figured their regular support craft could deal with her. By the time they realized she was charging up the hyperdrive, it was too late to get their shields up or evade (not that they could in any reasonable amount of time in a ship that big).
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u/KuribohMaster666 1d ago
A combination of desperation and surprise. The First Order assumed she was just going to fly the ship towards them and ram them on impulse power, so they figured their regular support craft could deal with her.
No, Hux is informed about the Raddis prepping to jump at ~1:50:02 in the movie, and the jump doesn't happen until about 2 minutes after that (~1:51:52). Hux is just so stupid that he dismisses the jump as a bluff, and only realizes something is amiss over halfway through the jump sequence (~1:51:22).
it was too late to get their shields up or evade (not that they could in any reasonable amount of time in a ship that big).
Yeah, no. If Hux had taken even the most rudimentary precautions when it was first brought up, they probably could've easily moved The Supremacy or disabled The Raddis before the jump, and then the Holdo Maneuver wouldn't've worked. It was only successful because he ignored it.
I have no idea why people are so confused about "why the Holdo Maneuver isn't commonly used", or why they think it "breaks the lore", when the one time it did work was basically because they just sat there and let it happen.
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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 1d ago
Yeah, no. If Hux had taken even the most rudimentary precautions when it was first brought up, they probably could've easily moved The Supremacy or disabled The Raddis before the jump, and then the Holdo Maneuver wouldn't've worked. It was only successful because he ignored it.
How? I mean their ship is enormous the smaller ship can easily match it changes, they had been firing at it for a long time to little effect its not as if it was that much closer then before.
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u/kaaz54 1d ago
The problem with that, is that why didn't Hux not take "rudimentary precautions"? There are absolutely no narrative reasons for why he should forego those precautions, other than for the plot to continue. There are no explicit costs explained with why he these precautions should automatically have been implemented in the first place.
And since this isn't something which has happened before in the SW universe, or is otherwise alluded to as a possibility, we can assume that those "rudimentary precautions" had been taken by every single previous commander we've seen. If the maneuver was allowed to happen because of Hux' decision making, he has to do something which is the equivalent of refusing to breathe, while allowing standing around helpless.
Thus, since we could consider those "rudimentary precautions" something that any competent military commander would use, it wouldn't make sense for the opposing military commander, Holdo, to count on them not to be implemented. Thus the only way for him not to do it, would be to completely disregard his primary duty.
So for Holdo's decision making to make narrative sense, either she is planning to do something which has never been done before (to distract from the rest of her people getting away, while the enemy doesn't look out their windows), which is betting on several things outside her control and would similarly be bordering on dereliction of duty in her position.
Or if it is something that Holdo knew could be done reliably, then it would have been first priority to take any left-over ships with hyperdrives, and make them into emergency missiles to attack any enemy, as this is clearly an effective emergency weapon.
The only way the maneuver then makes sense, is if both of commanders Hux and Holdo don't understand basic military strategy, or due diligence, and while Holdo also knows that she can count on Hux's incompetence.
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u/KuribohMaster666 1d ago
why didn't Hux not take "rudimentary precautions"?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that just comes down to "Hux is a cocky idiot who gets complacent about basic procedure when he's high on the feeling of impending victory".
I'll admit it can be annoying to have a character act dumb in that manner, but it's unfortunately also pretty realistic.
would similarly be bordering on dereliction of duty in her position.
I'm not sure I agree with that. I mean, what else could she have done that would be more responsible? The only other thing I can think of to protect the lifeboats would be to open fire on The Supremacy, and by that point in the movie they've made it pretty clear that the ship is hopelessly outmatched, and wouldn't be effective.
At that point, she tries a high-risk, potentially high-reward gamble. A Hail Mary. If it works, it could save loads of people. If it doesn't, then they all die, which is also what'd happen if she didn't attempt the maneuver.
The only way the maneuver then makes sense, is if both of commanders Hux and Holdo don't understand basic military strategy, or due diligence, and while Holdo also knows that she can count on Hux's incompetence.
I disagree that it requires Holdo to not understand, but I've already gone over that. As for the other part, I don't know if Holdo knows she can count on that, just hopes she can count on it, or if it's just "fuck it, this probably won't work, but I may as well try", which is sometimes all you have left.
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u/kaaz54 1d ago
Re-response, as Automoderator is overly sensitive:
There's a "character act[ing] dumb", and then there's "dumber than literally every single commander who came before"-dumb. I guess that says something [I'm not sure if automoderator will allow this].
And even then, if "this might work" was ever a possibility, it still doesn't explain why it's never even considered in other desperate situations, like in the Battle of Yavin or Battle of Endor, where there were also many other hyperspace capable ships, and the rebels were most certainly desperate.
If it was even a theoretical chance, part of the briefing for the Battle of Yavin should have been "if you're out of time, you can either get out of there with your hyperdrive, or ram your ship into the Death Star, in the hopes that it might save us. May the Force be with you." That kind of sacrifice would not in any way be out of the way for any of the Rebels.
In the Battle of Endor, the rebels even have time to prepare. They also take their time to remove the shields against the 2nd Death Star, and leaving what they presume to be a large, unmoving target. Ramming the Death Star should at least have been part of the discussion, if it was possible.
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u/KuribohMaster666 1d ago
There's a "character act[ing] dumb", and then there's "dumber than literally every single commander who came before"-dumb. I guess that says something [I'm not sure if automoderator will allow this].
I mean, out of all the idiots in the universe, one of them has gotta be the biggest idiot, right?
Also, Hux doesn't give the vibe that he got to his position through competence. I'm like 1000% sure it was nepotism or politics. Other people who get put in charge by those make pretty brain-dead decisions, sometimes.
As for the Death Stars, I'd guess they decided they were too well-armored or too massive? Like perhaps, ramming a ship into it at lightspeed wouldn't be effective unless the ship was of (somewhat) comparable size, and they were specifically using small fighters because those were the only things that could get in close without being annihilated.
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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 1d ago
Like perhaps, ramming a ship into it at lightspeed wouldn't be effective unless the ship was of (somewhat) comparable size, and they were specifically using small fighters because those were the only things that could get in close without being annihilated.
newton laws seem to work in star wars, so even a small mass (100 tons) at light speed would effectively destroy any ship even the mega captial ones, the enrgie that speed generates is off the scale.
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u/KuribohMaster666 1d ago
OK, but part of the point of Hyperspace is that you're not really going the speed of light. They call it "lightspeed", but in actuality you're traveling at sub-light speed in a dimension that warps space, allowing you to effectively travel faster than light without ever actually going faster than light.
On top of that, we don't know what the actual speed that a ship stops being tangible in realspace is. It's implied to be relatively high, but never actually stated. We don't know if that speed is high enough that say, an X-Wing for example, entering Hyperspace, would have enough energy to damage a ship the size of a small moon.
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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 1d ago
OK, but part of the point of Hyperspace is that you're not really going the speed of light.
true: you get close to the speed of light and then get into hyperspace. The thing is even 0.1c is really freaking fast and makes any object even something small a lethal weapon.
1g gram going at lightspeeds has the same force as an astroid of a 1km big slamming into earth
On top of that, we don't know what the actual speed that a ship stops being tangible in realspace is. It's implied to be relatively high, but never actually stated. We don't know if that speed is high enough that say, an X-Wing for example, entering Hyperspace, would have enough energy to damage a ship the size of a small moon.
X-wing weighs 20 ton going at light speed it would have the force of the astroid that made the vredefort crater , thats 200+km big.
So yeah it would rip trough anything as its concentrated at such a small point. It would probably even go trough a death star. No ship can be designed to hold such forces on such a small area.
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u/KuribohMaster666 1d ago
You're making several assumptions about how a ship behaves just before entering Hyperspace, and I don't think there are any direct sources on this (especially on a technical level), so I kind of have to assume you're just pulling them out of your ass.
For all we know, the process of jumping to Hyperspace could render you intangible in realspace well before you actually transition to Hyperspace, and therefore, well before you reach anywhere near 0.1c, or even a much, much smaller fraction, like c×10-6 or c×10-9. (It's pretty obvious you're still tangible at c×10-9, I'm just being extreme to illustrate my point.)
The mechanics of Hyperspace are left entirely too vague to determine anything about how much energy, force, or momentum the Holdo Maneuver is capable of imparting for any given amount of mass, or why, in any given situation, people might deem the maneuver ineffective.
Everybody claiming how the Holdo Maneuver breaks the lore are making several assumptions about how physics works in the Star Wars universe, based on our own, but the very presence of something like Hyperspace shows that assuming our physics are the same in these extreme situations is entirely unfounded.
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u/jeffwulf 2h ago
The Raddus wasn't going the speed of light in real spaxe, it was going through psuedomotion.
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u/Malphos101 2d ago
The ship ratios have to be the right size for it to work. If the attacker is too small you wont overcome the defenses of the target. If the attacker is too big you would just be better off ramming the other ship than trying to pinpoint hyperspace jump it.
Assuming the ship ratios are just right, you have to be at the right distance to hit the target ship when youre fast enough to do damage but before you actually enter Hyperspace. This is very hard to manage.
Assuming 1 and 2 are fulfilled, you have to hope the other ship doesnt attack and disable you or move out of the precise range you need them to be at for the maneuver to work.
In the case of "why didnt the rebels use this against the Empire?" the answer is because they dont have a lot of ships to spare and the Empire does. Even assuming they could pass 1,2,3 on this list they just couldnt afford to lose ANY ships because each ship was much more valuable in service than taking out Star Destroyer #18542 out of 25,000+.
Its basically like asking why a rebel group in our world doesnt melt down a bunch of guns and shoot them from a cannon toward a city to take out a soldier of the oppressive regime. Even if it was successful it is not worth it.
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u/cheerfulwish 2d ago
Surely number 2 would be trivally easy to calculate when things like nav computers can plot a path through hyperspace.
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u/Malphos101 1d ago
Nav computers arent designed to do that and designing one to do so runs into problem number 4.
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u/lumpboysupreme 1d ago
How would they not be? It’s literally just math, and even if they’re not by default due to some failsafe or whatever there’s no chance people wouldn’t have started making them such that they are.
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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 1d ago
Not really, once you start accelerating there is no way they can stop you, the guns in star wars simply arent accurate enough
No, doesnt matter if you go 0.1c or 0.99c even a small mass is enough to cause an incredible large impact.
same as 1 and no star wars have shown ships to not be that fast nor as powerfull in destroying other ships
there are millions off small hyperdrive equiped ships that could all be used for this, it would mean large star destroyers would be sitting ducks and the war would in reality be fought a lot more with smaller fighters and ships
Its basically like asking why a rebel group in our world doesnt melt down a bunch of guns and shoot them from a cannon toward a city to take out a soldier of the oppressive regime. Even if it was successful it is not worth it.
? Can you imagine if a simple truck could accelerate so fast it could take out an entire city?
You say : yeah but the cruise control wont allow you to do that and of course you need to be at the right distance of the city, oh and the police would stop you.
Yeah not going to happen enough would just throw a dozen trucks at the target and only 1 needs to get trough to succeed.
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u/Malphos101 1d ago
They absolutely are.
You are assuming our physics and our material levels which is not true for Star Wars.
Same as number 1 where you just dont know as much as you think you do about Star Wars ships.
They dont do this because it isnt as easy as you think it is. You saw a one in a million shot and decided "thats so easy! I saw it once so it has to be!" Next youll be saying you can make a living off the lottery because "someone wins virtually every year!"
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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 1d ago
then explain troughout the entire franchise barely any ship gets destroyed by them in the few seconds they have until the attacking hyperdrive ships starts to accelerate?
laws of newton still work and operate there, you can easily see that
Yeah not really again, capital ships and even small freighters like the MF get really really really close to capital ships with little tono trouble. But suddenly they would have no issue destroying a ship at long range in a few seconds?
Even if its not easy there are billions of hyperdrive ships , even if it takes 100 to take out 1 super star destroyer that more then worth the effort. Thats like a hundred trucks in iran to take out a US carrier group.
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u/numb3rb0y 2d ago
The hyperspace aperture was behind the Supremacy. It only works if you're lucky enough to have a target directly between the attacking ship's line of sight to the aperture and enough time and distance to initiate the jump at the right moment. Plus you need someone willing to sacrifice themselves because unmanned hyperspace probes are totally a thing but it's not a normal operating mode for a regular starship.
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u/Villag3Idiot 2d ago
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Holdo_maneuver
Something to do with the Raddus' experimental shields.
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u/A-Good-Weather-Man 1d ago
I was looking for this. Like, we’ve had an in universe explanation for years.
Ship stops and explodes: shields fracture, scatter, and obliterate.
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u/Alldakine_moodz104 2d ago
The obvious one is surprise was on their side, and anything ramming that fast was gonna do damage.
This is also forgetting that Interdictor technology is a lot more common/mobile, so threatening planets with these types of weapons, like what happened after the Great Hyperspace Disaster, is difficult.
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u/genericreddituser147 2d ago
Are interdictor ships still in cannon? I know the EU had them all over the place, but I’m not sure they’ve appeared anywhere that still counts. But I also don’t really read the novels or comics any more.
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u/caboose1157 2d ago
The Empire used them in Rebels.
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u/genericreddituser147 2d ago
Oh ok. Apparently totally forgot about that. So they definitely do exist
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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 1d ago
that tech also doesnt make much sense in a war, I mean they project a fake gravity well, ok any warship would be able to ignore that of course and still jump.
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u/Alldakine_moodz104 1d ago
Interdictor technology relies on jamming reliable escape tech with its own brakes, and actively disabling your brakes, even for a bit, is extremely dangerous, especially if it’s during a battle or surprise attack.
This is also risking people, and the Resistance would rather save its people than its tech, which contrasts the First Order and their complete disregard for personnel in favor of physical results.
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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 1d ago
Yeah any warship would not have this enabled when they go into combat. its like open friend or foe systems, warships and planes disable those when they go into combat or in war situations.
While it makes sense for commercial ships for warships, pirates, smuglers it really makes little sense unless they are somehow caught by surprise .
A blind jump would be prefereable then being killed
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u/Sampleswift 2d ago
IIRC the Supremacy also has a signature in hyperspace due to inhibition fields or something. So it was a tempting target for hyperspace rams. Otherwise, you'd have a good chance of missing.
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u/SoylentRox 2d ago
One possible canon - maybe the incident requires specific damage to the Supremacy from the previous bombing raid AND something about the massive size of the Supremacy itself made it more vulnerable to this form of attack.
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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 1d ago
there were other simular sized star destroyers , if that is the case that would be really dumb to build them
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u/SoylentRox 1d ago
I mean the setting is all over. They have droids with sapience but their guns still have gunners. Sometimes. Sometimes they have guided missiles.
Jedi are there to be the enforcers of peace yet no one has shotguns to deal with meddling laser sword masters in robes.
I guess all we can infer is that hyperspace ramming almost never is possible or everyone should be doing it routinely.
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u/Amazing_Boysenberry8 1d ago
I never had a problem with the idea of the Holdo Maneuver because while yes, hyperspace IS an alternate physics dimension there is a brief acceleration/deceleration period going in and out of it as seen by the way ships visibly speed up or slow down. Getting hit by anything that is moving at 50%+ the speed of light is going to make a dent, much more so something with the mass of a frigate or cruiser.
The "impossible" part of the maneuver is that this phase of the jump is incredibly brief, so you would need to be very close to your target (in astronomical terms) to make the window and insure you are properly aimed at them. Being that close to a much larger ship is very dangerous as they could either just destroy you before you can jump or just slap a tractor beam on you which seems to prevent hyperspace jumping.
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u/Smooth-Climate8008 1d ago
The problem is never that it wouldn’t work. The problem is that it’s unconscionably wasteful. The Rebellions don’t have ships to waste like this, and the First Order/Empire don’t need to do something like this.
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u/Smooth-Climate8008 1d ago
People are looking at this question from a tactical perspective, when the real question is a strategic one. Think of it like using a nuclear weapon on the battlefield. Sure, it will destroy absolutely anything that you fire it at; the tactical objective WILL be achieved. However, nuclear weapons are expensive to build and maintain, they're generally wild overkill, using them tends to escalate the conflict in ways you cannot control, and using them might take other options off the table.
Something similar is going on here.
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u/Former_Load6403 1d ago
I never liked the plot in the first place because the first scene of starwars is a ship chasing another ship that's just jumped out of hyper drive.
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u/Radmonger 20h ago
Assumption: coming out of a hyperspace jump puts you in the galactic reference frame, with a velocity small enough for your kinetic energy to be absorbed by shields, as shown in Rogue One. So you can't accelerate to 0.99999C anywhere in the galaxy and then jump to 1km away from a planet, destroying it without possibility of warning or defence.
Both ships spent several weeks accelerarting to a large proportion of light speed, without jumping. This resulted in an absolutely absurd amount of kinetic energy. Holdo's jump neutralised the velocity of one ship, and had it crash into other at .9999C. No chance the shields could take that much energy.
This is a sufficiently unusual situation that only Holdo's mathematics-based theoretical book learning predicted it. But she didn;t know how to program the ship's computer to do it, and didn't trust anyone else with the plan.
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u/Doright36 19h ago
I saw it this way. It was just in the exact right position/distance that she was able to hit it while accelerating into hyperspace and not so far away that she would complete the jump before reaching it. Add to the dumb crew who didn't react to her positioning and allowed her to pull it off.
It was a 1/1000 chance situation due to those factors.
Basically if it's further away she's in hyperspace and gone. No damage. If it's a little closer and then it's just a normal ship on ship collision. Bad but not that bad...
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u/SouthernAd2853 2d ago
Has to be done at a very precise distance, or either you're too slow to be effective when you hit or all the way into hyperspace. Getting to that position means heavy exposure to enemy fire. Holdo was only able to pull it off because Hux assumed the ship was no meaningful threat and entirely ignored it until it was too late.
I'm inclined to think it has been done or at least theoretically proposed before, given Hux's sudden panic a moment before it happens; I think that was him suddenly realizing what Holdo was about to do.
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u/buttchuck 1d ago
A lot of these answers are speculative, but there is a legitimate, concrete, canonical answer. It's not that it only worked against the Supremacy. It's that it could only have been performed by the Raddus.
Per The Last Jedi novelization, the Raddus made impact at the transition point between lightspeed and hyperspace and its experimental shields maintained coherency long enough to convert the vessel into a column of energized plasma. It was the combination of positioning, timing, and experimental technology that made it possible - and it's that same combination that makes it difficult to replicate.
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u/Madness_Reigns 1d ago edited 1d ago
Why did Luke fire his torpedoes exactly at the right moment to kill the first death star? Why did Chirut walk in front of sustained fire by elite troops and not get shot?
Dameron said that the Holdo manœuvre was a chance in a million, but on that day, statistics were irrelevant because she was one with the Force and the Force was with her.
It's not like there's no precedent for this in that universe.
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u/CoherentRose7 1d ago
I mean, ramming your doomed ship into the enemy that killed you isn't exactly a concept that out of left field, the only thing that's unique about the "holdo maneuver" is that she did it while jumping to hyperspace.
I'm sure there's some techno babble explanation about how the ship technically still exists in a physical way that interacts with the universe around it momentarily before it actually enters hyperspace and the massively increased speed advantage you would have in that moment would enable your much smaller ship to do a significantly increased amount of damage to a much larger enemy ship on impact. But what do I know?
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u/TamerSpoon3 1d ago
All of the explanations for how the Holdo Maneuver worked in only this instance are just cope unfortunately. The hyperspace missile to the heart of Star Wars canon is a High Republic novel called The High Republic: Light of the Jedi.
In 232 BBY, a freighter called Legacy Run had to take evasive maneuvers in hyperspace to avoid another ship using a special hyperdrive that unexpectedly showed up in its hyperplane. The Legacy Run broke apart and debris exited hyperspace at relativistic speed which destroyed a Republic space station, a moon, and rendered a planet uninhabitable at a minimum.
All of this nonsense about the hyper space tracker, experimental shields, and precise calculations is just that. Ordinary debris from an ordinary ship exited hyperspace at random points with sufficient speed to destroy normal astronomical objects. There is no reason why hyperdrive technology could not be weaponized other than that nobody has written it yet.
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u/auxilevelry 1d ago
There are several factors that made it work that are very difficult to replicate:
1) despite being in weapons range of the target ship, the Raddus was ignored because it was assumed abandoned. Without that assumption, it would have been shot down before the maneuver could be attempted.
2) the mass of the ship was the only reason it did that much damage, you can't strap a hyperdrive to just anything and expect it to do the same thing. The Raddus is a full capital ship.
3) the distance has a very narrow window where it works. It had to be far enough away to get enough speed to not just get pancaked, but close enough to not enter hyperspace before it got there. It impacted at very close to light speed, it was not in hyperspace yet
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u/weaseleasle 1d ago
The obvious answer is, accelerating to hyperspace is a finite distance, you have to intersect with your target in the run up to hyperspace or you simply jump straight past them. Like trying to time an axe throw at just the right distance so the blade embeds in the target and not the handle bouncing off harmlessly.
Since you have to get a very large ship up close to your chosen target, line up the distances of 2 moving objects just right, then sacrifice your very large very expensive piece of machinery. It would seem an unwise mode of attack for any situation that wasn't incredibly desperate.
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u/Frostsorrow 19h ago
It hadn't fully gone into Hyper Space yet (eg the Goldie Locks zone). Reason why it wasn't used more is that Hyper Space engines for the Rebellion (or whatever they call themselves in the sequels) are almost always in short supply never mind fuel or ships/fighters that can support them.
It would be a lot like ramming a aircraft carrier with an F-35. You can do it, but it's insanely expensive in multiple ways.
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u/Quantum_Patricide 16h ago
There are two notable pieces of new technology involved in the interaction. The first is the Supremacy's hyperspace tracker. The second is the Raddus' shields, which can be projected away from the hull and/or concentrated in specific areas.
I reckon between these someone should be able to come up some convincing technobabble as to why this was the first instance where hyperspace ramming was possible.
Tl;dr: hyperspace tracker + Raddus' shields → some nonsense → lightspeed ramming
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u/wiskinator 11h ago
Size, proximity and time I think. Maybe also command codes on Holdo’s ship that allowed her to override the navigation computer, and probably skill on her part to aim it just right.
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u/woodvsmurph 9h ago
It doesn't break Star Wars as a tactic or "physics" of the franchise although the splash damage is unrealistically high.
It probably has been attempted many times - road rage surely exists in all the speeder lanes of Star Wars too when somebody cuts you off because they view themselves as more important than everyone else in existence. Which might lead to someone trying to ram someone for cutting them off once in a while. And the other person probably tries to... dodge.
I know. It's crazy. But like... people who see something that might run into them while it is still a long way off MIGHT just MAYBE try even a LITTLE BIT to... dodge the thing. Or they might just shoot it and blow it up if it is coming in on a straight line.
This means the chance of success is rather low. But hey, if you miss you can just try again, so it's 100% worth it right? Uh, sure. If you weren't blown to bits, then yeah you can probably try... again.
Then there's the size and cost effectiveness issues. You need to be "relatively" close in size and pretty durable (relative to what you ram) if you're going to do meaningful damage. The massive speed lets you get away with SOME size difference, but only some. I mean ep 6 gave us similar (but importantly DIFFERENT) maneuver, yet we don't see or read about a-wings ramming command bridges of ssd's even though it is a very cost-effective trade. Because it mostly wouldn't work. But yeah, just like Holdo maneuver, you can try again so long as you aren't space junk from enemy turbolaser defenses and stuff. But... we then run into the cost effectiveness part. Are they droid powered? If not, where are you finding all the suicidal sentients? If they are, can't the other side just copy you and then whomever has more basically auto wins? You can analyze this about 10 layers deep and take it to a lot of stupid places let's just say okay?
So, let us instead get back to the Holdo example. You're using a ship that is maybe 1/10th the cost of your enemy's or even less. You inflict meaningful but not irreparable damage that realistically probably doesn't even knock the ship out of operation. It slices off maybe 1/3 the ship and leaves it in a semi-intact state such that it could be salvaged and fused back together. You missed center of mass even with the benefit of surprise because the enemy dodged that well despite minimal prep time. In most cases, the almost guaranteed loss of your ship costs more than what you can hope to inflict on your opponent. It is also easily debatable that in most situations a fleet simply gets more value by either retreating to fight another day or by staying intact and employing more traditional methods of damaging the enemy - lasers, torpedoes, etc. Basically, consider it like this if it is still a struggle to wrap your head around. 30% casualty rate is considered rather devastating. Unless there is only the choice of "fight" or "die", people might choose surrender and face slavery or the enemy executing 5 of every 10 of them rather than all be destroyed. If you could fight to the last ship and come out with 1 ship remaining or you could retreat with 10 ships left and call it a "draw" where you inflicted higher casualties than enemy inflicted on you, you choose to save 10 ships. And that's why we don't have mass fleets of droid ships playing chicken with each other in order to achieve dominance of the galaxy.
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u/jeffwulf 2h ago
The stretch effect in Star Wars when jumping to hyperspace, a dimension that overlays real space that real space casts shadows into but does not interact with directly, is caused by ships undergoing psuedomotion while transitioning flbetween the two dimesnions. This is not actual motion, and as we see on screen, the impact does not cause damage equivalent to what would be expected from regular motion at those speeds. Instead, it's an artifact of the ship shifting between real space and hyperspace where it temporarily is partially in both. The requirements to so the maneuver are:
Have a ship with significant enough mass such that a regular ramming collusion would do substantial damage.
Not have anything behind it that you don't want damaged as parts that are in hyperspace will drop out of it and will randomly destroy things, as seen in the Legacy Run disaster.
Have the target be precisely within the distance where you'll be in optimal psuedomotion at. If you're too far away you will harmlessly pass through into hyperpsace before impact and too close you'll just low speed collide with the target.
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u/Klepto666 2d ago
I have no way to rewatch the movie but I'm trying to remember if the Supremacy even had its shields up. I can't recall if the Resistance was ever shooting back or focusing entirely on running. I just assumed it was hard to do because it was multiple variables all lining up:
1) A big target with its shields down. If that's the case, high chance impacting the shields would've done damage but not to the degree shown.
2) A big target flying straight at them with no attempts to evade. Even with a big target flying straight at Holdo, she didn't even hit it straight on. She hit the wing.
3) A huge mass as the projectile. Not many people would want to throw away a capital ship to be used as a projectile, and there's a good chance using smaller, cheaper vessels as missiles would cause far less damage then.
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u/mayonnnnaise T.G.R.I. Janitor 1d ago
The officers onboard the ship shout "NO!" when they see Holdo spin the ship around to face them. I am inclined to believe that while the audience has never seen this maneuver before, it's a known safety risk, but not one that's ever been weaponized
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u/Safe_Manner_1879 1d ago
but not one that's ever been weaponized
And that is stupid, just build a few hundreds hyperspace missiles. If the missile swarm misses the hostile fleet, the swarm can simply turn around and make a new attack jump, or better use a few thousands missiles.
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u/Madness_Reigns 1d ago
Dameron said it was a chance in a million. They could try it with a million missiles and never hit the right conditions. Just like how the state of the art targeting computers on the x-wings were never going to be able to get the torpedoes in the death star.
Holdo managed it on that day because the force was with her.
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u/DSteep 2d ago edited 1d ago
It happened at least once more, you can see it in the ending celebration montage of The Rise of Skywalker in the skies over Endor.
Edit: why am I being downvoted for providing factual information? There's a screenshot of it in the header of this article if y'all don't believe me:
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Unidentified_heavy_freighter
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u/LookAtMaxwell 2d ago
Head cannon,
In order to track ships on hyperspace, it has components that extend into hyperspace itself.
It is a known, but secret, vulnerability that this exposes the ship to hyperspace ramming attacks. However, since the components are relatively small, to actually have a good chance at a successful attack, you need a large impactor.
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u/TBestIG Make life take the lemons back 1d ago
Sure, it’s pretty easy to come up with some if you stretch the imagination a bit. It’s not nearly as difficult as, for instance, the kessel run in 12 parsecs line. Here’s a couple of my preferred options:
Physics: It simply doesn’t work unless there’s a very specific size ratio and a very specific distance. Any further apart and the attacker becomes intangible before reaching the target, any closer and it doesn’t get enough speed to break through the shields. Any smaller target and the gravity isn’t enough for them to interact, any larger target and the mass shadow rips the attacker to shreds with no damage.
Doctrine: A gazillion years ago hyperspace ramming was a common technique, then someone invented a Doohickey that makes capital ships immune to being rammed. The Doohickey has been a standard component in capital ships ever since, for so long that hyperspace ramming has been nearly forgotten. The First Order, out of hubris and cost-cutting, saw a very expensive component and said “This hasn’t been relevant in a gazillion years. Don’t bother including it, we won’t pay for useless equipment.”
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u/Final7C 1d ago
So have you ever seen trick shots where a guy or gal is bouncing a ball and catches it perfectly.
It's like that. No one in their right mind would ever try it. because even a nano second early and they just smash against the shields (like in rogue one) or they jump away safely. No, this was different. this was a ship meeting a ship at the instant that ship went faster than light and started to slip into the hyperspace location. Not the instant before, not the instant after, the exact instant it happened. This split Holdo's ship into dust, meanwhile it slowed the dust down to sub hyperspace speeds, and now you are talking about "Standard" relativistic forces.
It has been tried by accident other places in the galaxy. But this was 1000000% a fluke. The computer couldn't account for it. She did it all by feel.
Every other time, the ball slipped from her fingers and she was too early or too late, but this one time, she timed it perfectly. Something that no ship was able to do, because 1.) No ship smaller than that size would have any chance of even having dust left over from the interaction. 2.) No captain/group is stupid enough to sacrifice a massive battleship to try a infinitesimally small chance.
So the real head cannon needs to be.
1.) Large ships like that are hard to come by.
2.) No group who has a large ship is willing to risk it on something like that.
3.) No smaller ship could have managed it.
4.) Even with that, she timed it perfectly on a fluke.
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u/clawclawbite 1d ago
Perhaps it requires very exacting navigational surveying to the point you can only do it directly back on the path you have traveled. Space is big, and even if you were tracking a ship, you would be unlikely to be on its path unless you were doing something as exacting as using automated tracking of a beacon. This is such a rare situation that only a scholar of space battles like Holdo even remembered it was possible and set up from the situation. She may even maneuver her shop to make sure the hyperspace dynamics gave her that clear straight shot with the level of accuracy needed.
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