Mr. Oragahn wrote:Hyperlanes might be related to speed, but they might be related to volume as well.
I'm not knowledgeable of TCWW, enough, but weren't hyperlanes largely talked about regarding the displacement of large fleets?
Perhaps the problem isn't one of debris, but one of medium integrity.
Let's say those hyperlanes are capable of withstanding the displacement of a large concentration of ships without having to worry about the hyperdrives failing to keep the compass aligned with the destination?
Moving a small cargo or yatch through hyperspace from butthole world A to butthole world B creates minimal "waves" of perturbation, but things start to get tricky when you're talking about entire fleets and their fuel and spare parts support.
Perhaps hyperlanes are stabilized by either devices or crafts that frequently ride the lanes up and down to clean and smoothen them.
What's my point?
Huh, you tell me.
I'm just too tired... -_-
Mr. Oragahn wrote: [...]
Yes, blockading or mining hyperlanes poses a major problem to large armies in the middle of a war. Yes, the GAR was willing to find another hyperlane, even if it meant going through Hutt space and taking a detour, rather than build themselves a new one. And yes, in the movies, you don't get the impression that anyone really is forced to follow the hyperlanes, simply because that concept didn't even exist.
At worst, a miscalculation would put you through a star, that was all.
Now, it's true that mentionning hyperlanes needn't be done all the time, and TCW hardly mentions them at all, save for very few occasions relevant to massive logistics, in the middle of a war.
Sothis' point that it may take time, say lots of time, to build a safe passage, especially for an entire fleet, is sound, although not necessary emphasizing enough the need for a safe passage precisely. More to the point, it does not elucidate what is so unsafe about plain old interstellar space and why the GAR would shit its pants about going across wilderness when they certainly must have good enough star charts for at least stars, planets and moons, plus some stray comets eventually. And seriously, a comet, what's the risk of hitting one? And is a comet even relevant to hyperspace travel?
Perhaps we should reconsider this as well? What is the slightest asteroid meant maximum danger? Decades of EU have sort of brainwashed into making us think only stellar bodies with a strong gravitational field were of influence. But I think this was based on Han's remark about plotting a course. Are all pilots really suicidal? I doubt so, yet that would be the idea if anytime you went into hyperspace, you knew that the slightest piece of rock would put an end to your blue tunnel-looking superspeed trip across the stars.
I still can't picture asteroids being that bad when in hyperspace. Can you?
But then this means empty space (99.9999999999999999999% empty) is actually super safe, no matter what.
And if there is no such risk, then what advantage hyperlanes provide?
What are hyperlanes?
Are they natural occurances or artificial?
Are machines used to maintain this state or are they made of some special but still natural stuff? Are they hyperspace currents? Maybe a special manifestation of the Force itself? A residual sliver/trail of concentrated Force-related phenomenon that really allows hyperspace to be amplified or at least simplified?
Are hyperlanes some kind of predrilled or smoothed tunnels that increase speed and traffic volume? Are they tunnels where hyperspace itself is more fluid, already sheared or something?
If hyperspace is more of a medium with some matter of some kind, perhaps drilling a tunnel through that takes time and fuel, and meets lots of resistance.
Then a hyperspace tunnel, or hyperlane, would guarantee a stable route despite high traffic, would guarantee top speeds no matter what, and would guarantee lesser fuel expenditure.
All of this, for example, would certainly matter A LOT to an army on a budget (and the GAR definitely is) that has to move behemoth ships...
Any suggestions?Mr. Oragahn wrote: I understand both views and there's clearly a middle ground.
[To 2048:] You say hyperlanes are hugely important, like, erm HUGE.
[Sothis] says well there's more risk but that's affordable to anyone.
If it weren't for a very few episodes making a big fuss about the hyperlanes, we wouldn't have to imagine things for like all the movies plus the ~98% of the rest of the show.
For example, how many times do you NOT mention taking a specific kind of road when you're going to go from point A to point B and that's quite a considerable distance between both?
Is it because hyperlanes would be so common that nobody would ever mention them? We take roads for granted yet it's actually rare when someone does not say that they'll take road X, motorway ## or else when covering a long trip (like one hour or more), unless it's so regular that they simply don't mention the route/path anymore.
But most SW events happen on or around worlds which are totally alien to most of the characters featured in each film or episode. The chances that they'd never talk or discuss about the path that's best to take seems highly unlikely unless in normal times, it wasn't such a big problem.
That characters never ever mention taking any specific route the vast majority of the time is quite something. Fact is that we would have never thought about such a concept until it came out of nowhere as part of some plot intrigue.
Where I'm not so hot is on the risk idea. As detailed in my former post, I don't see what's risky about going "off tracks", if there's such a thing.
I mean, aside hitting a star, which is very easy to avoid with decent astromaps, there wouldn't be serious dangers to any astronavigator.
At worse, hyperspace might be influenced by high gravitational mass and travelers might be pulled in in the same way any matter if affected by gravity fields.
So over a long distance, since the computer would tend to aim for the barycenter of a given system by default, I suppose, you would indeed risk being pulled into a star, even if the world you aim for is on the other side of the system.
But other than that, I think it's being overdramatic. I think it's more than a question of risks.
Mmm, actually I made a mistake since he said:2048 wrote:That is not his claim. He claimed that finding safe passages was very quick. Reference his argument of the Imperials getting to Hoth easily (presupposing that Hoth was somewhere far off-lane), or his claim that "Furthermore, the OT demonstrates off-lane travel is possible, and a matter of using sensors and starcharts to plot a safe route. Luke's passage to Dagobah was a journey to an uncharted world, yet Luke was able to get there. Likewise, Luke was able to get from Dagobah to Bespin in short order (heading from said uncharted world)."Sothis' point that it may take time, say lots of time, to build a safe passage, especially for an entire fleet, is sound
In short, it can be done in the space of the film, he says. Now, he may have also made contrary statements that I'm not recalling, but that's part of the reason I have no patience with him.Slighter? I don't think so, that's way too moderate, as I think the difference still needs to be really relevant.Sothis wrote: Again, this is a misrepresentation of my point. Sensors, star charts, probe droids, scouts - all perfectly valid means of circumventing lanes if needs be. Not without greater risk and it may well be slighter slower if you have to wait for data from probes, scouts etc - but entirely possible.
Still, with a world such as Kamino being reached rapidly by Obi-Wan or even the Republic's fleet (to embark clonetroopers) despite that it should logically be located very far from any hyperlane so people could really forget about the whole system, we could infer that there's definitely a possibility for SW ships to get to a given location fast.
But what we're not told, is at what cost. And when I mean cost, I don't mean figuratively. When Yoda took so many ships [to Kamino, and from there] to Geonosis in a heart beat, apparently, it happened at the beginning of the war. I'd argue that at that moment, the Republic wasn't even keeping an eye on the spend as it would months later.
Imagine the talks about how the fleet forcing its way through such unbeaten paths required hyperdrives to be heavily taxed, with hyperfields being barely able to hold on, and in the end, with so many ships needing repairs because of overall damage to their superstructures, flash-pushed into spacedocks for maintainance, sometimes far away since there wasn't room left [near combat sectors], many of which proved to be problematic because it meant negociating prices with private owners of construction and repair slips, and the prices went up like crazy across an entire quarter of the galaxy, not to say [anything] of all the lost contracts with disgruntled clients, some very wealthy, told to leave room because some Republic Cruiser was due to arrive in urgency in a couple hours and just STFU if "you're not with us you're against us" mentality. Not to talk of all the fuel this required (since TPM we know that hyperdrives need to be constantly powered), plus the fact that moving so many ships in one throw made the whole hyperspace band so unstable that the ships at the tail of the fleet could barely hold their course and had to push their hyperdrives harder, some of them forced to "quit the race", do some repairs, redo calculations or arrive late, at the risk of completely ruining the assault's chances of success.
In a few words, basically hyperspace might not be that easy and cheap "other space" to go through, until you actually use known paths where many ships tunnel their way through it on a daily basis, which tends to soften that corridor of flight if you want; which itself poses dangers due to the severe usage and therefore requires some form of highway maintenance as well.
We could easily imagine some hyperlanes to be privately owned, and that would somehow give credence to the idea of blockading a world through economics.
Old hyperlanes that might have been extensively used, even if not used anymore, could still be "reactivated", although not up to their former efficiency. Imagine the effect of millions of men walking the same path across a rocky hill: surely, the stone surface there will be smoothed by the incessant cohort of footsteps.
Now, say this path gets forgotten, and is rediscovered a century later. You have piles of dirt, some parts of the rocky walls might have caved in or partially fallen onto the path, there would be vegetation of varying density, but assuming you could get rid of those problems, the path itself would prove much easier to navigate, especially for your large chariots.