Star Wars: The Last Jedi release thread (spoilers)

[Vympel]

Has anyone else asked why one of the smaller Resistance capital ships didn't hyperspace-ram the Supremacy instead of just running out of gas and getting blasted? If the Raddus could do it, why couldn't one of the others have done it first and crippled the Supremacy so the rest of the fleet could get away?

Because:

a: It never occurred to them;
b: If they had, they would've been blown apart before they were able to make the jump, there being nothing else to draw Supremacy's attention at the time, unlike when the Raddus was quite explicitly ignored;
c: If they had somehow avoided being blown apart, there's no reason to think that ships with a mere fraction of the volume and mass of Raddus would cripple the Supremacy; and
c: Because it would rob the scene of all of its drama if we had seen it multiple times before and that's not how movies work.

[Vendetta]

b: If they had, they would've been blown apart before they were able to make the jump, there being nothing else to draw Supremacy's attention at the time, unlike when the Raddus was quite explicitly ignored;

That's going to be the real issue.

The mass would be barely relevant at high fractions of c, but those other ships were destroyed basically immediately when they started to fall behind. They're a small corvette and a medical frigate, and they're the focus of every gun on the Supremacy as soon as they get into range. Even if they tried to ram it wouldn't work, better to evacuate them instead.

[The Romulan Republic]

Has anyone else asked why one of the smaller Resistance capital ships didn't hyperspace-ram the Supremacy instead of just running out of gas and getting blasted? If the Raddus could do it, why couldn't one of the others have done it first and crippled the Supremacy so the rest of the fleet could get away?

Because:

a: It never occurred to them;
b: If they had, they would've been blown apart before they were able to make the jump, there being nothing else to draw Supremacy's attention at the time, unlike when the Raddus was quite explicitly ignored;
c: If they had somehow avoided being blown apart, there's no reason to think that ships with a mere fraction of the volume and mass of Raddus would cripple the Supremacy; and
c: Because it would rob the scene of all of its drama if we had seen it multiple times before and that's not how movies work.

That, and the Rebels/Resistance aren't the kind of ruthless organization likely to order soldiers on kamikaze runs until all other options have been exhausted.

[GuppyShark]

"Captain it's okay if you want to die with your ship but under no circumstances attempt to hyperspace ram or jump out and see if you can draw off some of their fleet."

[The Romulan Republic]

"Captain it's okay if you want to die with your ship but under no circumstances attempt to hyperspace ram or jump out and see if you can draw off some of their fleet."

I'm not arguing the tactical logic of it- I'm noting that the Rebels/Resistance are never depicted as ordering outright suicide attacks, and that suicide attacks in Western media are often associated with either Jihadi terrorists or Kamikaze pilots of Imperial Japan, so it might be off-putting to some to see them employed by the good guys.

Though I would note that that ship where the captain went down with it was blown up almost immediately after it finished evacuating (IIRC it was a medical frigate). So the captain was literally just holding out until his ship could be evacuated, and probably didn't have fuel left for a ramming attack by the time that was finished.

[GuppyShark]

If they literally ran out of fuel as they finished unloading then that is reasonable, albeit conveniently dramatic.

[The Romulan Republic]

Yeah, that was the impression that I got from the film.

In retrospect, the wise tactical choice, if possible, would probably have been to unload everyone onto one or two ships sooner, then hyperspace-ram the Supremacy (ideally using a non-sapient droid to pilot the attack).

This would be a very unconventional tactic for the Star Wars universe, though I'm not sure why- I posted a thread on the subject a while back:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=167102

[Batman]

Suicide runs are well represented in western media. It's just the suicider is rescued at the last second so while the desperately needed breakthrough their death was was to buy happens, their actual death does not.

[The Romulan Republic]

Notably a suicide attack by the good guys was played straight in Man of Steel, as I recall.

For a Star Wars example, there's the A wing that rams into the Executor at the Battle of Endor, although (leaving EU Legends stuff aside), its somewhat ambiguous to me how much that was deliberate vs. an out of control fighter.

[Galvatron]

That, and the Rebels/Resistance aren't the kind of ruthless organization likely to order soldiers on kamikaze runs until all other options have been exhausted.

Are we ignoring the Battle of Scarif or was it totally not the same thing when Admiral Raddus ordered one of his corvettes to ram a star destroyer?

[The Romulan Republic]

The corvette wasn't actually destroyed. From the footage of the scene, its intact and using its engines to push a disabled SD away. In short, its the galaxy's most badass tugboat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbfr6k7R9zQ

[Batman]

Notably a suicide attack by the good guys was played straight in Man of Steel, as I recall.

You are quite correct. 'humourless male cop from L&A:SVU' suicide-dives a C-17 into the kryptonian ship

[GuppyShark]

"A good death is its own reward."

[Galvatron]

The corvette wasn't actually destroyed. From the footage of the scene, its intact and using its engines to push a disabled SD away. In short, its the galaxy's most badass tugboat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbfr6k7R9zQ

Wookieepedia says it was destroyed though. How about this?

[The Romulan Republic]

"A good death is its own reward."

I daresay that's pretty much what was going through Luke's head at the end of TLJ.

But yeah, the general rule in Hollywood seems to be that good guys only use suicide attacks when basically all other options have been expended. Which is... a pretty reasonable point of view.

[Batman]

Also death doesn't mean the same to Force users.Yoda and Ben probably did more damage to the Empire from beyond the grave than they ever did when alive

[The Romulan Republic]

You know, if Yoda can throw lightning from beyond the grave (and thank the Force that Palpatine never learned that trick), then how come he doesn't just fry Snoke and Kylo Ren?

[Patroklos]

Because:

a: It never occurred to them;

The most obvious solution to 99% of the out of universe audience didn't occur to the in universe military experts? Yeah, great writing there...

b: If they had, they would've been blown apart before they were able to make the jump, there being nothing else to draw Supremacy's attention at the time, unlike when the Raddus was quite explicitly ignored;

Doesn't work based on what we see in the movie. There is no reason for the ships to wait until they actually run out of fuel. If this was possible it should have been realized instantly by both sides (again, just like 99% of the audience). So unless the max acceleration of all the ships present just happens to be exactly the same (I hope you realize how stupid this would be), a rebel cruiser who is already outside of the destructive range of the FO guns with hours worth of fuel at whatever acceleration should have been able to burn ahead to execute the jump well outside the FOs ability to interfere.

c: If they had somehow avoided being blown apart, there's no reason to think that ships with a mere fraction of the volume and mass of Raddus would cripple the Supremacy;

So instead of trying we just let them run out of fuel and be blown up to zero effect? Hey, do you want to know what has an even better mass ration than the Ruddus vs Supremacy by several thousand times? Any of the other Rebel cap ships vs any of the Resurgents present.

c: Because it would rob the scene of all of its drama if we had seen it multiple times before and that's not how movies work.

Don't write yourself into corners where such things make sense then.

That's going to be the real issue.

The mass would be barely relevant at high fractions of c, but those other ships were destroyed basically immediately when they started to fall behind. They're a small corvette and a medical frigate, and they're the focus of every gun on the Supremacy as soon as they get into range. Even if they tried to ram it wouldn't work, better to evacuate them instead.

They were destroyed because they let themselves run out of fuel and FELL into range of the Supremacy. Or more accurately they Supremacy continued to accelerate and they did not.

So just don't let that happen. There is no reason to let that happen.

Though I would note that that ship where the captain went down with it was blown up almost immediately after it finished evacuating (IIRC it was a medical frigate). So the captain was literally just holding out until his ship could be evacuated, and probably didn't have fuel left for a ramming attack by the time that was finished.

The stupidity of needing the Captain to be there at all just to let the engines run out and have the ship continue on the exact course it was before because that's how spaceships work aside, there is no reason that to be the case if they chose to ram. Just do so while you still have fuel left to do whatever maneuvering you need to do.

There is also no reason for that to be the case as the scene unfolded either. Those smaller ships were destroyed well into the chase scene, was it really necessary to wait until you ran out of fuel to evacuate? Is everyone in this movie so stupid that they can't look at fuel gauges and a constant fuel burn rate and figure out the inevitable. Oh wait, they can, because they talk about exactly that, yet somehow can't predict the consequences of that... (of note if they had known about Finn/Rose it might make sense to wait until the last minute because you might get a chance to jump, but then again I assume there is a minimum jump fuel usage they could have planned to as well. It also would have made sense if Pink had sent a runner to call for help and they were expecting it to arrive. As it was Pink was so stupid she thought she couldn't, even though someone on hers ship did exactly that.)

But back to this stupid "all the ships have the exact same acceleration " bull shit. We can assume that the Supremacy, its sole purpose in the moment being to run down the Rebels, was at its max acceleration. We can assume that the Resurgents present either the same or marginally less (so if they were falling behind its not noticable) as the Supremacy otherwise they would have chased the Rebels down themselves. So that leaves us the Rebels. They obviously don't have less dv than the Supremacy or the Resurgents or they would have fallen into FO range immediatly and there would be no chase. They could have exactly the same dv, all three wildly different sized and designed ships, but that is stupid (though possible given the rest of the movie, and what fans in this thread are willing to accept). The logical in universe explanation is exactly what we are told and see:

1.) a hyperspace jump will exhaust their fuel and since the FO will track them this will leave them immediately vulnerable
2.) so its better to use their better sublight dv performace to stay out of range now to buy time.

All is well and good, this makes perfect sense using the given parameters (those parameters are, however, stupid), but it means:

1.) The Rebels actually do have better dv, because if they didn't they never would have been able to leave the destructive range of the Supremacy's weapons in the first place
2.) If they were smart (again, there is unfortunately no reason to assume this...) as soon as they observed the Supremacy's max acceleration they would match it once out of destuctive range to preserve fuel (which is why the medical frigate nearly instantly dies when it runs out of fuel, there is no reason to gain additional separation beyond that).

All of this proves that there was no reason for the Raddus to ever have been back in destructive range when it made the run it did, and that the smaller ships could have done the exact same thing safety themselves should they have wanted to.

So the conclusion is, yes, they could have done the same thing with the smaller ships. Yes, they could have done meaninful damage to FO assets, and there is no evidence this wouldn't have worked against the Supremacy itself. Yes, they should have done this from a simple cost/benefit analysis. And finally, Vympel was right in is first guess. The character are just that stupid. I can't wait to buy their action figures!

[Kojiro]

1.) The Rebels actually do have better dv, because if they didn't they never would have been able to leave the destructive range of the Supremacy's weapons in the first place

There's a problem with this.

From Wookiepedia:

The ship was propelled by eleven engines, with three large KDY Destroyer Ion Engines and eight smaller Gemon-8 ion engines.[4] These engines required a subsidiary reactor, reactant silos and isotope containment wells at the stern. There, extra power would be derived while the coolant silo and pumps would help lower the temperature of the massive engines. Around the large, circular engines were the main engine thrust nozzles, while the smaller engines would utilize secondary thrust nozzles to help bring greater control over the ship. The main engines were attached to magnetic turbines, along with an acceleration compensator. In a straight line and at full speed, the Resurgent-class could be faster than a TIE/fo space superiority fighter, however doing so would negate any maneuverability and require a staggering amount of counter-thrust to execute the slightest maneuver. Thus, only the most reckless commanders traded the ship's maneuverability for its speed.[8] The hyperdrive generator was located at the very end of the ship's aft section.[1]

Given we see Kylo and his wingmen literally run circles around the Raddus, going up and down it's hull with impunity, there's no doubt TIE/fo are faster. If those stardestroyers can achieve that kind of speed they should have no trouble catching the Raddus. They don't even need to go full burn, just enough to catch them, which is clearly easily within their ability.

[Patroklos]

Larger vessels being faster than smaller vessels makes sense real world, but this is just an example of Disney writers being shit regardless of media.

So now we have to ask why the Resurgents in the movie didn’t just chase Raddus down and cue the curtain 15 minutes in.

[Gandalf]

So now we have to ask why the Resurgents in the movie didn’t just chase Raddus down and cue the curtain 15 minutes in.

Space ISIS aren't great at space military things all of the time?

[Patroklos]

Four separate Captains, explicitly in a chase situation, forgot their ship’s max acceleration? We are not talking about rocket surgery here.

Talk about the tyranny of low expectations. If you will accept that, no wonder Disney is phoning it in.

[Gandalf]

Four separate Captains, explicitly in a chase situation, forgot their ship’s max acceleration? We are not talking about rocket surgery here.

Talk about the tyranny of low expectations. If you will accept that, no wonder Disney is phoning it in.

A person occupying a high position within a military junta not necessarily understanding the full scope of what's going on beneath them? How alien! Are there any examples from real life where political and military overconfidence led a powerful country to get completely fucked over by people it underestimated?

I could certainly see Hux standing on the bridge with a big "Mission Accomplished" banner behind him, as the Resistance fleet is slowly being destroyed.

[The Romulan Republic]

The stupidity of needing the Captain to be there at all just to let the engines run out and have the ship continue on the exact course it was before because that's how spaceships work aside, there is no reason that to be the case if they chose to ram. Just do so while you still have fuel left to do whatever maneuvering you need to do.

Right, because its totally customary for responsible captains to leave their bridge entirely unattended during a crisis, just because they have a good autopilot. I mean, by that reasoning, why do they have pilots at all in Star Wars, instead of all the ships being drones?

What if the autopilot malfunctions? You want someone on-hand to actually man the bridge. And this is even without getting into weather Star Wars has a cultural tradition of "the captain goes down with the ship".

I would expect the captain to be the last person to evacuate, and any captain who didn't follow that rule would likely be seen (rightly) as a coward and derelict in their duty.

See, this sort of thing is what I mean about people desperately reaching and holding double-standards to attack the ST. This is a non-criticism, which would not for an instant be criticized in a more-beloved film, but is absurdly inflated into "evidence" that the filmmakers are stupid because its not enough for you not to like TLJ- no, it has to be proven completely worthless on every single possible point, no matter how minor.

There is also no reason for that to be the case as the scene unfolded either. Those smaller ships were destroyed well into the chase scene, was it really necessary to wait until you ran out of fuel to evacuate? Is everyone in this movie so stupid that they can't look at fuel gauges and a constant fuel burn rate and figure out the inevitable. Oh wait, they can, because they talk about exactly that, yet somehow can't predict the consequences of that... (of note if they had known about Finn/Rose it might make sense to wait until the last minute because you might get a chance to jump, but then again I assume there is a minimum jump fuel usage they could have planned to as well.

They were attacked by Kylo Rens' fighters almost immediately after entering the system, and sustained heavy losses and a decapitation of the command structure immediately after. Their first priority was probably "survive the next ten minutes", then damage control, before they started thinking about longer-term plans. Then it takes time to evacuate a ship, and then, they run out of fuel.

Again, this is a trivial point that probably no one would make a big deal about if it weren't for legions going over TLJ with a fine-tooth comb looking for any minor point, no matter how trivial, that they can inflate into big issue to justify their hate.

It also would have made sense if Pink had sent a runner to call for help and they were expecting it to arrive. As it was Pink was so stupid she thought she couldn't, even though someone on hers ship did exactly that.)

Its difficult to tell what you're talking about because of your penchant for irrelevant nicknames, but from context, I gather that you are referring to Admiral Holdo?

In that case- well, I said I would say it outright if I was calling anyone here a bigot, and... yeah. If you're using gender stereotypes or their appearance to belittle a female character- yeah, I'm going to call that sexist. You may now commence your indignant rant about evil SJWs.

And if you want to say that you're criticizing her because of her actions, not her gender- maybe so, but then criticize her actions. You are the one who chose to use an insult to her appearance evoking gender stereotypes to attack her. There's no reason to do that if all you care about is her actions.

As to the question of sending a ship out to carry a call for aid- its an interesting idea. It might have worked, but I can also think of several reasons why it might not have:

1. They may not have had any hyper-capable small craft left. The transports explicitly are not, and their fighters all got blown-up in the hanger (the few they had left) by Kylo Ren. Remember, this is not a fully-equipped fleet at this point.

2. If they had any fighters/gunships left, they might have wanted to keep them on-hand for cover in case the First Order tried another fighter attack.

3. Fueling up a small ship to go for aid would have meant using up some of their precious fuel reserves on that.

4. It is entirely possible that the First Order could have tracked a small ship that was launched as well. As it happens, they don't appear to have tracked Finn and Rose, but could the Resistance have known that for sure? They might not have wanted to risk it.

Should these objections have been raised in the film? Maybe, but I think that it would have probably bogged down the film to do so. When you're writing a film, you're writing a film, not a technical or tactical manual. There has to be a certain amount of skating over details like that so you can move the story along, a certain amount of suspension of disbelief.

But back to this stupid "all the ships have the exact same acceleration " bull shit. We can assume that the Supremacy, its sole purpose in the moment being to run down the Rebels, was at its max acceleration. We can assume that the Resurgents present either the same or marginally less (so if they were falling behind its not noticable) as the Supremacy otherwise they would have chased the Rebels down themselves. So that leaves us the Rebels. They obviously don't have less dv than the Supremacy or the Resurgents or they would have fallen into FO range immediatly and there would be no chase. They could have exactly the same dv, all three wildly different sized and designed ships, but that is stupid (though possible given the rest of the movie, and what fans in this thread are willing to accept). The logical in universe explanation is exactly what we are told and see:

1.) a hyperspace jump will exhaust their fuel and since the FO will track them this will leave them immediately vulnerable
2.) so its better to use their better sublight dv performace to stay out of range now to buy time.

All is well and good, this makes perfect sense using the given parameters (those parameters are, however, stupid), but it means:

1.) The Rebels actually do have better dv, because if they didn't they never would have been able to leave the destructive range of the Supremacy's weapons in the first place
2.) If they were smart (again, there is unfortunately no reason to assume this...) as soon as they observed the Supremacy's max acceleration they would match it once out of destuctive range to preserve fuel (which is why the medical frigate nearly instantly dies when it runs out of fuel, there is no reason to gain additional separation beyond that).

Yes, that all seems pretty straightforward, as far as I can tell.

All of this proves that there was no reason for the Raddus to ever have been back in destructive range when it made the run it did, and that the smaller ships could have done the exact same thing safety themselves should they have wanted to.

That may actually be correct as far as there being no reason for the Raddus to have been back in range, unless it was decelerating for some reason (maybe to slow down as it approached the planet?). Though it seems somewhat silly to me to nitpick this in a franchise where people willingly swallow such things as space fighters behaving like aircraft and sound in space.

But it doesn't mean the small craft could have made the same attempt if, as I believe I mentioned before, they used up their remaining fuel buying time to evacuate to the Raddus (as is basically explicitly stated with the destruction of the medical frigate).

And again, it would be very out-of-character for the Resistance to resort to kamikaze runs as anything but an absolute last resort.

So the conclusion is, yes, they could have done the same thing with the smaller ships.

Doubtful.

Yes, they could have done meaninful damage to FO assets, and there is no evidence this wouldn't have worked against the Supremacy itself.

Even if the small ships could have rammed, considering the Raddus didn't completely obliterate the Supremacy, a ramming attack from the small ships could well have been survivable, and would almost certainly not have destroyed the entire FO fleet.

Yes, they should have done this from a simple cost/benefit analysis.

Turns out sapient beings are not computers. Never mind that you haven't even proved this point to begin with.

and And finally, Vympel was right in is first guess. The character are just that stupid. I can't wait to buy their action figures!

Yeah, they're that stupid, if you never give the film the benefit of the doubt, never suspend disbelief on any point, always take the most negative interpretation of any scene, and actively look for as many things to nitpick as possible.

Also, I basically don't buy action figures, but reading rants like your's honestly makes me want to go out and buy a Holdo action figure out of shear irritation.

[Kojiro]

A person occupying a high position within a military junta not necessarily understanding the full scope of what's going on beneath them? How alien! Are there any examples from real life where political and military overconfidence led a powerful country to get completely fucked over by people it underestimated?

Come on man, we're given a scene and diagram explaining that they Resistance have pulled ahead and are maintaining that distance. Where Hux is explicitly told 'We can't catch them.'

There has to be some person, somewhere, out of the literally MILLIONS of crew, that realises over the eighteen god damn hours that the ships aren't using their full capacity. I cannot believe that no helmsman pointed out they weren't at max burn.