The meaning and relevance of HYPERLANES

[Mr. Oragahn]

Pulled straight from this thread, some random thoughts about what hyperlanes are, and why do they seem to matter so much to both sides during the Clone Wars.

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... -_-

[...]
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...

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.

Sothis' point that it may take time, say lots of time, to build a safe passage, especially for an entire fleet, is sound

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)."

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.

Mmm, actually I made a mistake since he said:

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.

Slighter? I don't think so, that's way too moderate, as I think the difference still needs to be really relevant.

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.

Any suggestions?
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.

[2046]

1. The precise physical nature of hyperlanes is not known.

2. The fact that secret, ancient hyperlanes exist suggests they are either natural phenomena or at least pretty much maintenance-free.

3. The fact that the Republic's defenses were set up along known hyperlanes and that a secret, ancient hyperlane known as the Nexus Route would allow for devastating bypasses of these defense routes (as per the TCW Citadel arc) means that they are critical, strategically-speaking.

3a. This also means it is not strategically plausible to build/locate a hyperlane in the timeframe of a three year war, and presumably is not possible to just divine one from known parameters. Knowing half the Nexus Route info was useless, after all.

(Whether that meant waypoints 1-5 of 10, or just the even ones, or just the X and some Y coordinates versus Z and some Y, or maybe polar directions with distances as the other half, et cetera, is not known).

3b. This also means that off-lane travel, whether possible or not (but even presuming it is), is not strategically plausible within the timeframe of a three year war.

4. Without explicit evidence to the contrary, it makes no sense to presume that lanes or their need have vanished within decades . . . after all, secret ancient routes require their longevity, and the fact of their military need suggests that they are not mere commercial highways.

I realize Sothis disagrees, but the above represents my general thesis at the moment based on the canon information currently available.

[Picard]

1. The precise physical nature of hyperlanes is not known.

2. The fact that secret, ancient hyperlanes exist suggests they are either natural phenomena or at least pretty much maintenance-free.

We know that a ship has to get free of planet's gravitational pull before going to hyperspace. So my theory about hyperlanes is the same as that of warp highways - they are simply well-mapped routes where ships use gravitational pull of stars and other massive objects to achieve speeds well beyond those achievable in the empty space (think gravitational slingshot, a well known concept from space research, particularly Pioneer 11/12 and Voyager 1/2 craft). This would also explain why Voyager was so slow on average, as it was in the unexplored space, and why speeds vary greatly in both Star Wars and Star Trek, without need to resort to WritersDon'tKnowTheMath to explain it.

3. The fact that the Republic's defenses were set up along known hyperlanes and that a secret, ancient hyperlane known as the Nexus Route would allow for devastating bypasses of these defense routes (as per the TCW Citadel arc) means that they are critical, strategically-speaking.

See above. Of course, it could be that hyperdrive is more sensitive to gravitational effects, so that the usable FTL is only possible along hyperlanes...

[Mr. Oragahn]

1. The precise physical nature of hyperlanes is not known.

2. The fact that secret, ancient hyperlanes exist suggests they are either natural phenomena or at least pretty much maintenance-free.

We know that a ship has to get free of planet's gravitational pull before going to hyperspace.

That was a given in the EU, and even that point varied: sometimes ships had to leave the entire system (which was fairly absurd considering what happened in the movies), other times they could depart from anywhere.
In TCWS we even saw a ship do a jump in atmosphere, although it was risky and iirc, didn't happen to be preceded by a series of properly sufficient calcs.

I am not aware of any novelization or TCW insisting that gravity is such a danger.

[Mr. Oragahn]

1. The precise physical nature of hyperlanes is not known.

2. The fact that secret, ancient hyperlanes exist suggests they are either natural phenomena or at least pretty much maintenance-free.

3. The fact that the Republic's defenses were set up along known hyperlanes and that a secret, ancient hyperlane known as the Nexus Route would allow for devastating bypasses of these defense routes (as per the TCW Citadel arc) means that they are critical, strategically-speaking.

3a. This also means it is not strategically plausible to build/locate a hyperlane in the timeframe of a three year war, and presumably is not possible to just divine one from known parameters. Knowing half the Nexus Route info was useless, after all.

(Whether that meant waypoints 1-5 of 10, or just the even ones, or just the X and some Y coordinates versus Z and some Y, or maybe polar directions with distances as the other half, et cetera, is not known).

3b. This also means that off-lane travel, whether possible or not (but even presuming it is), is not strategically plausible within the timeframe of a three year war.

4. Without explicit evidence to the contrary, it makes no sense to presume that lanes or their need have vanished within decades . . . after all, secret ancient routes require their longevity, and the fact of their military need suggests that they are not mere commercial highways.

I realize Sothis disagrees, but the above represents my general thesis at the moment based on the canon information currently available.

I'd agree with all points safe 3b, unless you want to assume that everytime a ship has been hyperflying, it had followed a hyperlane, no matter how minor it was.
I sincerely doubt both Imperials and Rebels knew about the same route that led to and out of the Hoth system. Nor any random path that went from Bespin to Dagobah.
Why would the Empire know anything about a hyperlane that would lead to that end of the world ice planet of Hoth? And how in hell could Luke even find a path to the mud world of Dagobah when it seems nobody has ever visited this place in ages, even less cared about it. Or how could Obi-Wan even find the path that would lead him to Kamino?
The system wasn't in the Jedi's files anymore, and for the sake of considering Dooku smart enough, he'd have also erased the path to this system.
This doesn't add up.

By the way, the idea that a single hyperlane being blockaded really screws on logistics means that there aren't many of them. Yet I think your model would require pretty much every single system, not to say main world in said system, to have a couple hyperlanes connecting to it. With such a model, alternatives to one path would be so numerous that any notion of blockading a hyperlane would be completely fruitless.

The strategical importance could easily be explained by the immense advantage provided by hyperlanes for high speed heavy traffic, such as a war fleet. Speed is the key. If you're too slow to move your assets, you can be outmaneuvered. So it doesn't matter if you can go off-tracks, because this is going to take much more time and energy than using the nice sleek hyperlane. The advantage has to be substantial enough in terms of speed whereas on one hand you'd be stuck lumbering at a decent but still sluggish hyperspeed, whilst on the other hand you'd be zipping across space in no time flat.
A difference of five to ten is huge, strategically wise. If you're too slow, worlds you'd wish you could assault by surprise or at least fast enough will be now covered. Or the enemy will be already gone, or you'll fail to bring reinforcements in due time. Etc.
Imagine a trip that would only take the best part of a day now takes a full week or more.

Finally, more to the general point of hyperspace:
If there is a inherent resistance to hyperspace, then a hyperlane could be a natural or artificial path of least resistance.
It seems that one cannot be carved out fast enough, or at all.

Thus far with the EU I don't we can even know if hyperlanes can be "built".

[2046]

I'd agree with all points safe 3b, unless you want to assume that everytime a ship has been hyperflying, it had followed a hyperlane, no matter how minor it was.

Why not?

I sincerely doubt both Imperials and Rebels knew about the same route that led to and out of the Hoth system. Nor any random path that went from Bespin to Dagobah.
Why would the Empire know anything about a hyperlane that would lead to that end of the world ice planet of Hoth? And how in hell could Luke even find a path to the mud world of Dagobah when it seems nobody has ever visited this place in ages, even less cared about it. Or how could Obi-Wan even find the path that would lead him to Kamino?
The system wasn't in the Jedi's files anymore, and for the sake of considering Dooku smart enough, he'd have also erased the path to this system.
This doesn't add up.

Implicit in your argument are two ideas.

The first is that hyperlanes are readily forgettable or easily lost or what-have-you. I see no reason for that. My GPS once tried to take me down a road so overgrown that the pavement wasn't visible and the trees had narrowed it down to man-width.

The second is the idea that a hyperlane is a tiny thread. For all we know a hyperlane could be light-years wide. Or, it could be both depending on the circumstance.

Suppose there was a light-years wide hyperlane that happened to run through the space occupied by Alpha Centauri and Sol en route wherever. Obviously you'd want to calculate your course quite carefully in such a circumstance if you were going to be flying by, and maybe it'd be faster to pass close to one or the other star unless you're in a big ship (ref. Malevolence). But, of course, not too close.

(Indeed, Earth might be a navigational hazard, if you'll forgive the Hitchhiker reference.)

The lane might have a flow, like a river, or it may allow passage in either direction . . . I would presume the latter. And judging by planetary blockades that seemingly invariably involve ships parked within a few dozen kilometers of a particular spot from which opposing ships invariably emerge, it's possible that there are also hyperlane termini at planets . . . like exit ramps. I don't think their use is required, but they seem to be the easiest way.

But, they may not exist at all. This requires more research . . . if folks are usually coming and going via the same rough point and they're going in a different direction, then termini seem sound. But I imagine there are some cases where this doesn't occur. Certainly you don't have to use the on-ramp . . . we've seen in-system short jumps on multiple occasions . . . but it's probably easier for normal needs.

Even if we have wide hyperlanes, there's no reason there couldn't be slender fingers going every which way as well to catch certain other systems. And of course, there could also be systems that are completely off the charts, as it were.

Suffice it to say, it is not implausible that there's a road to everywhere we've been. There were, after all, other systems near Kamino . . . maybe the lane was big enough to allow for direct transit there, or maybe Obi-Wan was able to take a lane to a system nextdoor and then proverbially hoof it the last parsec. We don't know, but there's no reason to assume anything one way or the other.

The strategical importance could easily be explained by the immense advantage provided by hyperlanes for high speed heavy traffic, such as a war fleet. Speed is the key. If you're too slow to move your assets, you can be outmaneuvered. So it doesn't matter if you can go off-tracks, because this is going to take much more time and energy than using the nice sleek hyperlane. The advantage has to be substantial enough in terms of speed whereas on one hand you'd be stuck lumbering at a decent but still sluggish hyperspeed, whilst on the other hand you'd be zipping across space in no time flat.

Something like that, yes. The thing is, though, the difference must be substantial. If the Nexus Route was the tide-turner that they indicated, it is obvious that they couldn't reach Coruscant (or vice versa to the Separatist main worlds) via any other means in a worthwhile amount of time.

A difference of five to ten is huge, strategically wise. If you're too slow, worlds you'd wish you could assault by surprise or at least fast enough will be now covered. Or the enemy will be already gone, or you'll fail to bring reinforcements in due time. Etc.
Imagine a trip that would only take the best part of a day now takes a full week or more.

I would think it a greater difference, myself. Orders of magnitude.

[Sothis]

Only just seen this thread! OK, in light of the other thread and the arguments therein, I would like to revise my position. I have just drunk a rather lovely strong beer so if my spelling deserts me that's_why!

Hyperlanes are fast routes (some may be faster than others, I don't know) that carry tremendous strategic value. Control of these routes is obviously crucial to both sides.

In the same way that hyperlanes are fast routes, smaller routes must presumably exist to allow passage to worlds that are not on the major routes. Think of it like this: Motorway, A Roads, then B roads, and finally country lanes. Traveling at the same speed on a country lane is theoretically possible but ill-advised - you're more likely to smear yourself against a brick wall (or star in this case).

Establishing a new route is going to be a matter for probes and scouts, but the feasibility of this during war time is questionable, especially to do it thoroughly and avoid the enemy learning of it and exploiting it.

In peacetime... Who knows? The Empire was under no pressure and could have scouted new routes at its leisure. It might not have bothered (would it have needed to?).

An issue remains in respect of Hoth. Would the Rebels establish a base near or along a major hyperlane? It wouldn't make much sense for them to do so, so they might venture down a less traveled route. It would make sense for them to try and leave established routes altogether, perhaps taking a 'softly softly' approach to scouting a safe route . It would be risky, but I don't believe it would be beyond the abilities of Star Wars technology.

[Mr. Oragahn]

I'd agree with all points safe 3b, unless you want to assume that everytime a ship has been hyperflying, it had followed a hyperlane, no matter how minor it was.

Why not?

I consider the zero offtracks model unfun and to be too restrictive, as it requires to always assume way too much about stuff that's inherently invisible and puts too many limits already, in the sense that we would have to believe that every single time, no matter the ship, trip, distance and date, anytime someone pushed the button to activate an hyperdrive to move faster than light, said person's ship travelled along an hyperlane and that it is obligatory otherwise the ship is strictly limited to sub-c speeds.

Eventually, I can split the pear in two halves.
We can consider a vast network of wild, intertwined hyperspace slivers/strings or whatever, the sum of which would represent something like a wool ball or a massive brain-like structure, that's fine. Somehow, it might give the impression that it's alive. Plus if it's related to the Force, it might explain how there are some exceptional concentrations of Force, like there were streams of Force that converged onto a single point.
But I digress.

I'd wager, then, that some lanes are more important than others. This seems to be a safe bet that we're already all agreing on. On the other hand, some are so unused, say untapped, that they're very rough, wild and hard to navigate.
I'll stick to the idea that a hyperlane can get smoother the more it's used. Eventually, it might even allow for denser and faster/cheaper traffic, like if it were dilated, its boundaries getting more flexible.
Likewise, wild lanes are "tight" to go through.

After all, by the rules of physics, unless hyperspace is vacuum, there's no reason to consider it wouldn't take a constant effort to punch through it. By the very appearance of a hyperspace corridor when a ship flies through hyperspace, we could infer that there's definitely somre substance to it. And with any substance should come a modicum of friction.
Here's how the more ships would go through the same overall hyperspace band (which, indeed, could be very large if measured in astronomical units, but in hyperspace scales are perhaps very different), the lane gets easier to punch through.
However, the clearer the path or tube, the more ships can be funneled through it without requiring extending the boundaries of the hyperlane too far.

However, too much use might also weaken a lane. When you consider a small path going through a forest, at first the vegetation acts as a barrier. Then, the more people pass through it, the clearer it gets. However, the path turns into nothing more than a dirt trail at some point: the natural flora being utterly absent, any moderate amount of rain will transform the rather solid path into a mud lane.
What would take the role of some environmental hazard such as rain in hyperspace is open to anyone. It could be caused naturally or by the mere passage of a large fleet: many ships dumping their thrusters' ejecta inside those tunnels. We might even talk of [weakening] pollution.

But I still consider it necessary for any ship to be able to fly literally off any potential hyperlane. Some hyperlanes might be so rough and untapped that the gain using them would be irrelevant.
It might even be possible that everytime a ship goes through hyperspace outside of lanes, her trail actually creates a local, simile of a very minor hyperlane. The more ships which would take the same route, the more sheared this aera of hyerspace would be. Eventually, a constant flux of ships composing a near incenssant string of vessels from point A to B would keep the shear open. Let's image that unless there's a natural hyperspace stream, a path opened by a ship will be put under immense pressure and close itself.
Perhaps once such a shear actually gets connected to a "legit" hyperlane, it connects to the galactic network like it were connected to a vast assembly of interstellar rivers, and starts getting filled with hyperspace "current" or fluid, and so a new stream, short lived or not, does then exist. Perhaps we could talk of veins...

I sincerely doubt both Imperials and Rebels knew about the same route that led to and out of the Hoth system. Nor any random path that went from Bespin to Dagobah.
Why would the Empire know anything about a hyperlane that would lead to that end of the world ice planet of Hoth? And how in hell could Luke even find a path to the mud world of Dagobah when it seems nobody has ever visited this place in ages, even less cared about it. Or how could Obi-Wan even find the path that would lead him to Kamino?
The system wasn't in the Jedi's files anymore, and for the sake of considering Dooku smart enough, he'd have also erased the path to this system.
This doesn't add up.

Implicit in your argument are two ideas.

The first is that hyperlanes are readily forgettable or easily lost or what-have-you. I see no reason for that. My GPS once tried to take me down a road so overgrown that the pavement wasn't visible and the trees had narrowed it down to man-width.

The issue here is that the road doesn't move, nor the land it's built upon. In space, all things twist, and we have no guaranty that a hyperlane that doesn't get used wouldn't somehow twirl or twitch.

The second is the idea that a hyperlane is a tiny thread. For all we know a hyperlane could be light-years wide. Or, it could be both depending on the circumstance.

I'm not sure where you read that I considered hyperlanes to be small structures. However, to bump on that, hyperlanes might be sums of hyperthreads. With many ships, in the end, it would make a lot of "hair" spread over a large area.

Suppose there was a light-years wide hyperlane that happened to run through the space occupied by Alpha Centauri and Sol en route wherever. Obviously you'd want to calculate your course quite carefully in such a circumstance if you were going to be flying by, and maybe it'd be faster to pass close to one or the other star unless you're in a big ship (ref. Malevolence). But, of course, not too close.

(Indeed, Earth might be a navigational hazard, if you'll forgive the Hitchhiker reference.)

The lane might have a flow, like a river, or it may allow passage in either direction . . . I would presume the latter. And judging by planetary blockades that seemingly invariably involve ships parked within a few dozen kilometers of a particular spot from which opposing ships invariably emerge, it's possible that there are also hyperlane termini at planets . . . like exit ramps. I don't think their use is required, but they seem to be the easiest way.

But, they may not exist at all. This requires more research . . . if folks are usually coming and going via the same rough point and they're going in a different direction, then termini seem sound. But I imagine there are some cases where this doesn't occur. Certainly you don't have to use the on-ramp . . . we've seen in-system short jumps on multiple occasions . . . but it's probably easier for normal needs.

Mmm... aside plot fiat of different ships arriving at the same point, did we get any sense of this even being true? I mean, tight entry or exit points? Something like solid evidence?

I do think that large bodies would tend to bend hyperlanes towards them, explaining why it's actually easy to get sucked into a star if you come from a distant point flying at thousands of c, and why navigating a highly massive zone like a maze of exceptionally packed stars, or even a nebula, would be so problematic that you're probably wasting your time trying to punch through that mess while in hyperspace.

The phenomenon of odd similar arrival points might be explained by the shear theory, that a ship leaves in its wake, so basically the hyperdrive sort of clamps to this temporary rail. It's like in car racing, if you follow a car very closely, you're sucked in by the lower pression column of air as the car before you moves air sideways, acting like a bullet. Here, we'd just have to consider that this temporary corridor lasts much longer. At least enough for another ship's hyperdrive and computer to detect/sniff said trail and "fall" into it, literally riding it.
After all, hyperdrives should have a capacity for flexible adjustments.

Even if we have wide hyperlanes, there's no reason there couldn't be slender fingers going every which way as well to catch certain other systems. And of course, there could also be systems that are completely off the charts, as it were.
Suffice it to say, it is not implausible that there's a road to everywhere we've been. There were, after all, other systems near Kamino . . . maybe the lane was big enough to allow for direct transit there, or maybe Obi-Wan was able to take a lane to a system nextdoor and then proverbially hoof it the last parsec. We don't know, but there's no reason to assume anything one way or the other.

In the end, I can agree with a super threaded model as long as it's possible to fly outside of it. Typically, only the most used and clearer, smoother hyperlanes would really provide an advantage.
The whole game would be to find untapped natural hyperlanes, as it would be easier to turn them into viable trade routes than trying to bore a new one ex nihilo, although this option should also be possible.
And the less a hyperlane would be used, the more hyperspace could "heal" in the area. Or at least Nature would take back what belongs to it.

I think we more or less came to an agreement. Perhaps the only point of difference is that you may think totally offlane traffic is impossible, while I claim it is and there's no disadvantage to it if compared to riding a crappy, cranky hyperlane.

A difference of five to ten is huge, strategically wise. If you're too slow, worlds you'd wish you could assault by surprise or at least fast enough will be now covered. Or the enemy will be already gone, or you'll fail to bring reinforcements in due time. Etc.
Imagine a trip that would only take the best part of a day now takes a full week or more.

I would think it a greater difference, myself. Orders of magnitude.

Well, my figure was off the hand and really a low end. Yes, a greater differential would amplify the strategical advantage.

On another note, I wonder if we were to learn that hyperlanes can or are related to the Force, that the Sith might use some tricks to enhance the flow or find natural hyperlanes with currents in them. No ship could fly the later unless the pilot injected some massive amounts of Force voodoo into the astrogation process.
Might explain Palpatine's flash trip to Mustafar and back to Coruscant.
It might require using some artifacts, or else.


And just to cover the Kamino issue, should we consider that a very efficient hyperlane still existed there, relatively unmodified as the Kaminoans and their clients still used it, and all it took was for one Republic's ship to get close to it, spot it and benefit from it?
Thusly, we'd finally manage to explain how Yoda managed to get the republican fleet to Kamino and then to Geonosis in what seemed a very tight timeframe.
Assuming relatively good hyperlanes and the fleet's hyperdrives maxed out regardless of any long-lasting structural issues to the ships themselves (see my former point about damage to ships and the GAR's overall budget on logistics and maintainance not being under tight-pants heavy scrutiny yet), we'd get the beginning of a solution I presume.

[Lucky]

"They could prove vital in maneuvering our forces deep into remote Separatist sectors."

"Or the enemy could use them to slip through our defenses and attack Coruscant."

"These hyperspace lanes are of immense interest to both our sides and could tip the scale of the war to whomever is in possession of them. That is all."

Captured! Returning from a perilous assignment in the Outer Rim, Jedi Master Even Piell's cruiser has fallen under attack and been boarded. Seeking vital information he carries about secret hyperspace lanes called the Nexus Route, Separatist forces have taken him alive.

Now the Jedi are preparing a stealth mission into the heart of Separatist space in an effort to rescue Master Piell from the deadly prison known as the Citadel....

War in the Expansion Region! As the Separatists tighten their grip over vital but isolated supply routes, the Republic launches a lightning strike into a remote Ghost Nebula to control the strategic system of Umbara. Republic forces smash through the Separatist blockade in an effort to claim the shadowy world...

A galaxy divided! Striking swiftly after the Battle of Geonosis, Count Dooku's droid army has seized control of the major hyperspace lanes, separating the Republic from the majority of its clone army. With few clones available, the Jedi generals cannot gain a foothold on the Outer Rim as more and more planets choose to join Dooku's Separatists. While the Jedi are occupied fighting a war, no one is left to keep the peace. Chaos and crime spread, and the innocent become victims in a lawless galaxy. Crime lord Jabba the Hutt's son has been kidnapped by a rival band of pirates. Desperate to save his son, Jabba puts out a call for help—a call the Jedi are cautious to answer…

Clone forces rally! As the war escalates in the Outer Rim, the Jedi Knights are spread thinly across the galaxy. Many new clones are rushed into service to support their Jedi generals. Unfortunately, because of the relentless demands of battle, many young clones must join the struggle before their intensive training has been completed. These clones, manning a vital network of tracking stations, are all that stand between the Republic and invasion…

[Mr. Oragahn]

Nice data mining.

[2046]

Y'know, given the precise calculations required and whatnot, I think it's probably more fair to say that hyperlane travel is *more* dangerous, not less.

After all, bouncing too close to a supernova is hardly likely if I can plot a more or less direct route. But if I'm on some squirrelly path that is light-years wide and there's all kinds of insanity involved, I'd only be interested in taking that path if its helluva fast.

The mental paradigm here is river travel on the Mississippi. If you think about it, river travel is sort of insane . . . you have to build a boat, not sink it, not hit sandbars, get all the river navigation right, avoid collisions, et cetera. But insane as it may be, it makes a lot more sense than even the safest walking trail, because it's helluva-faster.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Y'know, given the precise calculations required and whatnot, I think it's probably more fair to say that hyperlane travel is *more* dangerous, not less.

After all, bouncing too close to a supernova is hardly likely if I can plot a more or less direct route. But if I'm on some squirrelly path that is light-years wide and there's all kinds of insanity involved, I'd only be interested in taking that path if its helluva fast.

The mental paradigm here is river travel on the Mississippi. If you think about it, river travel is sort of insane . . . you have to build a boat, not sink it, not hit sandbars, get all the river navigation right, avoid collisions, et cetera. But insane as it may be, it makes a lot more sense than even the safest walking trail, because it's helluva-faster.

That would be like being on a motorway but having the risk to drift off course and end in a tree without even realizing you had moved sideways.
I'd take that hyperlanes, good ones that is, come with a constant exchange of fresh information about monitored regions.

We'd pretty much agree that taking a hyperlane that hasn't been remaped/updated in ages is dangerous, and downright crazy if it was known to require massive amounts of maintainance and monitoring. Those things not necessarily being cheap, you could understand why for some political and economical reasons, some populations would reconsider their yearly budgets and massively reduce the local hyperlane tithe. Cue long debates about who should pay more, who gains most from the hyperlane (tourism, agriculture, industry, etc.), who uses it most in terms of traffic, etc.
Then, down the road, one point of agreement is found by most parties: not worth the cash. Period.
Especially if a bigger public or private hyperlane has been set not too far and provides a far better service with lower fees...

Or let's say one hyperlane was actually found or established by a private company which owned everything about it, and the company went bankrupt, all assets sold at a bargain and it wasn't worth the money again to revive the hyperlane since there were better choices, or at least good enough choices.
Imagine, for example, that one such company only allowed the travelers to use its own transport ships, like on a strict private railway. Add a layer of the council of shareholders and others deciding that speed wasn't of the essence and they started thinking "well, would these people rather spend a century to move around? I say it's fast enough, so cut the spending on monitoring and cleaning that hyperlane" and there you go, the service becomes crap. Meanwhile, a new small alternative network of small and still a bit rough hyperlanes starts to develop, partially supported by public funds.
Soon enough, the private hyperlane becomes a topic of mockery and disdain, and the new pack of alt-routes becomes a local phenomenon and a favorite of a couple planetary populations.

Also, another simple reason would just be the random yet terrible space phenomenon. Like a supernova or some neutron star starting to pull in all varieties of rocks from distant belts and sending them on silly random courses.
The lane becomes so unsafe despite serious attempts and monitoring as many pebbles as possible that it's decided closing it for good is the only solution left.

[2046]

Your points are not uninteresting, but they seem to involve a lot of conjecture, specifically about a volatility of hyperlane knowledge and a need for monitoring/remapping.

Other than the secret and forgotten Nexus Route . . . about which we have no history . . . there is no reason to conclude that routes become unknown by any means. That one may have been a secret the whole time by whoever originally had the knowledge.

And, given the fact that it was thought viable, there's no indication that it was going to require any work to use.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Your points are not uninteresting, but they seem to involve a lot of conjecture, specifically about a volatility of hyperlane knowledge and a need for monitoring/remapping.

Mostly ideas based on sound economics as to why certain assets would fall apart or be near forgotten.
Until we know more about hyperlanes, they'll just remain idle speculation.

Other than the secret and forgotten Nexus Route . . . about which we have no history . . . there is no reason to conclude that routes become unknown by any means. That one may have been a secret the whole time by whoever originally had the knowledge.

Agreed, we don't have evidence that hyperlanes would be forgotten. However, most of the takes I've read about what hyperlanes are lend credence to systems for which we know contain inherent factors which do lead to attrition and entropy under a great variety of conditions.
Even if we go with the idea that hyperlanes are 100% natural, totally free to use and never degrade or else, their knowledge is still up to databases and people.
Most people in the galaxy would probably know very little about hyperlanes as a whole and would rely on databanks, perhaps connected to some intergalactic wiki of some sorts, to know about them. After all, how much do you know about motorways or even rivers outside of a radius of 50 km?

We haven't even discussed about the intricacities of data corruption, dubious encryption and worms erasing whole sections of databases.
Imagine a society so used to the "cloud" for centuries or more that the mere idea of storing something locally, outside of any connection, instead on a central server, would seem as absurd as thinking water burns.

And, given the fact that it was thought viable, there's no indication that it was going to require any work to use.

Although we shouldn't make generalities out of one single incident, it's rather puzzling that characters assumed the route would be safe to use as long as they knew where it was.
In other words, unless they knew something we didn't, the idea here is that by default, hyperlanes might very well be safe transit paths by default. You just need to know where they are.

Odd.

[Picard]

1. The precise physical nature of hyperlanes is not known.

2. The fact that secret, ancient hyperlanes exist suggests they are either natural phenomena or at least pretty much maintenance-free.

We know that a ship has to get free of planet's gravitational pull before going to hyperspace.

That was a given in the EU, and even that point varied: sometimes ships had to leave the entire system (which was fairly absurd considering what happened in the movies), other times they could depart from anywhere.
In TCWS we even saw a ship do a jump in atmosphere, although it was risky and iirc, didn't happen to be preceded by a series of properly sufficient calcs.

I am not aware of any novelization or TCW insisting that gravity is such a danger.

It's not just EU, in A New Hope the Millenium Falcon cannot jump to hyperspace right away because it is too close to Tatooine, and I remember novelization explaining that, while antigravity engines work only in planet's gravitational field, hyperspeed is only possible once ship gets clear of that same field. That being said, it is quite a long time since I've last read it, so I might be misremembering things...