Because they're a pair of identical devices, there's no reason to assume they'd only go one way.tezunegari wrote: ↑2018-05-18 04:10pm Why would Rey have a locator beacon? The Resistance knows exactly where she is going: to Luke Skywalker on Ach'To.
She would only need to brind the Locator for the beacon Leia has in her possession.
And she only needs the Locator device because the Resistance is evacuating D'Qar without knowing where they are going to establish their new base, so they couldn't tell Rey to go there instead. (Why they didn't just tell her to go to a neutral system and meet a Resistance sympathiser there to facilitate contact... I blame the monkey)
Yeah I don't think they can communicate, but I think each of them can do what the other can, i.e. tell the user where the other person is. Even that information would be enough for Leia to check on Rey - i.e. did Rey make it to Ach'To? If her signal isn't there, or is somewhere else and moving in a supicious manner, she'd have reason to suspect Rey's been caught.Kojiro wrote: ↑2018-05-18 06:26pm See I got the impression they weren't able to communicate in such detail, and the beacon was, to use your expression, exactly what it said on the can. Not a relay or communicator but a simple beacon. It makes little sense, as I cannot believe Leia would not, having found him, at least want to talk to Luke. But there is zero communication between Rey and the fleet and Finn seems to think the only way to stop Rey returning to a 'doomed ship' is to get the beacon away. It doesn't seem to occur to him he can transmit a 'do not follow' code or for that matter, simply turn the thing off. To me that implies the device is on the simpler side and is just a beacon.
I didn't like it either. TLJ has way too much technobabble. The entire scene with Rose and Finn talking about the tracker made my eyes glaze over.Cloaking in general seems poorly handled though. The transports are 'cloaked' although we see the FO has telescopic lenses that can easily spot them, as well as sensors that are capable but simply not used to the full ability for unexplained reasons. The beacon is, well, stated to be a beacon and yet cloaked, a seemingly paradoxical device, like an intangible barrier. And of course DJ, who manages to somehow rig up a cloak on some pleasure yacht by plugging in his hackerbox. It's all a bit too technobabble for my liking.
The novel expands on the movie's "decloaking scan" shorthand, which makes it sound like there's a "detect cloak ships" button that simply isn't being pressed. It has Captain Peavey on the Supremacy express his surprise at Hux being actually a little competent:
TL;DR, 'decloaking scan' means search for trace emissions, analyse them, find their source, find 'cloaked' ship.The Mon Calamari warship's captain had clearly hoped that the transports fleeing its hangar would go undetected at long range - a gambit that might have succeeded if not for a tip from Hux, of all people, to zero in on trace emissions in the cruiser's vicinity.
Once the Supremacy's crews had analyzed the emissions, it had been relatively sraightforward for comm/scan to home in on their signatures, discover the ruse, and begin picking off the transports one by one.
Yeah I'm talking about a 'captured beacon' scenario as opposed to a 'detect signal' scenario, which presumably is very difficult if not impossible since the signal is by default somehow cloaked.Rogue 9 wrote: ↑2018-05-18 05:27pm Why? The First Order fleet was sitting around D'Qar staring at the Raddus for several minutes. It's not too much of a stretch for one of their sensor or communications techs to notice that the Raddus is emitting a locator signal, which must be strong if it works over interstellar distances. At that point they don't need to do anything else but profile the tracking signal and start tracking it. Such a scenario would make Hux's statement that they have the Resistance on the end of a string make much more sense.