Destructionator XIII wrote:Three main parts:
1) The galaxy is huge. Even if you have a basic idea about where to look, it's just an incredibly large place.
No it's not. I
can absolutely believe it's 100,000ly across and holds more than 400 billion stars
![Razz :P](./images/smilies/icon_razz.gif)
I'll happily agree it's pretty damn big though.
Quick quiz: how many stars are within 100 light years away from earth?
a: in the ballpark of ten to fifteen thousand
It's possible that they can narrow it down by listening to radio chatter, but even if so, the range of subspace radio is miniscule compared to the galaxy, and the number of wild goose chases they'd have would be big - starships, natural sources, etc.
Earth is the latecomer to the game and even for us, per TNG they'd have 400 years worth of radio signals to work with for old fashioned EM radio alone. (Of course, we also know that by the time of the NR, that's considered hopelessly antiquated and not
used anymore so unless Lando Calrissian is part of the invading fleet it's entirely likely they'll never think of that
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
).
Even if you assume they can investigate a single star in a matter of minutes, you're still looking at a long, long, long time doing recon.
If they
have to do that recon, absolutely. If they can somehow acquire
maps of the AQ (say, by buying them off the Ferengi) the missile spam scenario becomes much more practical-who cares if there's billions of stars if you have the coordinates of the planets that actually have people on them?
Note that most sources agree that there's unknown regions to the Star Wars galaxy, though they disagree on how big it is.
2) Spatial anamolies make hyperspace navigation difficult. New trade routes pop up fairly rarely in Star Wars.
Star Trek is packed full of weird shit.
Weird shit that may or may not affect hyperspace travel. Irrelevant either way though as they won't know where that weird shit is until they've either mapped themselves or
acquired maps of the AQ showing these anomalies.
The hyperdrive speed advantage may be limited by the Imp ships being forced to take a long way around, since they just don't have the navigation data.
Given the speed differential I doubt it's going to matter much (provided they have the navigational data to get there to begin with). We're talking a several orders of magnitude differential here.
Personally, I see Han's 12 parsec line as bullshit (like Ben did, look at his face). But the canon says it reflects the reality of his ship's advantage - it is able to cut distance off a trip that most people have to do the long way, by taking additional risks in navigation.
So, there's some precedent for shortcuts mattering in SW too.
To a completely undetermined extent. Unless there's any information on how far the
long route for the Kessel run is? (I very much suspect it
was mentioned in the second Han Solo trilogy but it's been eons since I read that).
3) Mapping a system is likely to take a lot longer than just observing it, or even arriving at it. Just because you know a star is there doesn't mean you know enough details about it to make decisions, whether navigational or strategic.
Actually, navigational decisions are easy-'Let's not run into it if we can avoid it'.
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But I assume you meant in-system navigation.