Mourning Star Wars - Leaks Destroy Hope.

The E wrote:
Quantity has a quality all of its own, as many a stupid general has thought.

Sigh. Do you even tried to imagine, how ENORMOUSLY HARD is to actually use numerical superiority? It is much, much simpler to wage war with a small number of highly-trained troops. It's enormously harder to wage war with a enormous number of poorly-trained troops, because the strain on logistic is order of magnitude harder.

It's like Germans in 1944, were completely astonished by the Bagration operation - because they could not even imagine troop deployment on such scale. Their logistic could never done anything like Soviet managed to do, moving enormous numbers of troops & weapons to the places and rushing them forward, providing constant supply for literally dozens of armies composed of tens of corps of several divisions each.

In short - it is HARD to fight with quantity. Much harder than with quality. But quantity is easier to sustain, if you have superior economy.

How does this correspond with Star Wars, where First Order is a bunch of zealous hard-liners somewhere on the periphery of the Galaxy, and Republic literally compose all Galaxy population and industrial potential?

Michael Everett wrote:The best tactic for the Starfortresses would have been as minelayers, creating an improvised explosive barrier with their bomblets and forcing the pursuing ships to either slow down to spread out the explosions weakening their shields (and cut down the chances of taking actual physical damage) or change their vectors, thus allowing the Resistance to get more of a lead and be able to do their planned "bail out and leave the big ship as a distraction" move.

Trying to push the super-slow flying bombs-pretending-to-be-combat-vessels in for a close-ranged bombing run was... ill-advised.

Actually, to save this scene it would probably be enough to let Startortresses attack in CIRCLE, enveloping the dreadnought from all directions.

Imaginos1892 wrote:
Obviously, Rian Johnson has discovered a new element: Dumbassium. That movie is full of it.

Dilandu wrote:Sigh. Do you even tried to imagine, how ENORMOUSLY HARD is to actually use numerical superiority? It is much, much simpler to wage war with a small number of highly-trained troops. It's enormously harder to wage war with a enormous number of poorly-trained troops, because the strain on logistic is order of magnitude harder.

Sigh. Why do you think I am unaware of this?

See, the thing is, if you have your logistics set up and if you have the industrial capacity behind you to produce a mountain of war materiel, then the people at the sharp end, the individual commanders and troops, do not need to be all that well-trained. What does it matter if the average X-Wing pilot can kill 10 TIEs, if there are 50 TIEs to each X-Wing?

Also, I am astonished that you, of all people in this forum, do not appear know the historical context of the "Quantity has a quality all its own" quote.

How does this correspond with Star Wars, where First Order is a bunch of zealous hard-liners somewhere on the periphery of the Galaxy, and Republic literally compose all Galaxy population and industrial potential?

Does it, though? Does the Republic, as reborn from the ashes of the Empire, have the national unity that it did when it was still the Empire?
TFA tells us, in no uncertain terms, that it doesn't: Leia and her Resistance crew are the only ones seeing the First Order as a threat; the rest of the Republic has turned towards other goals.
The First Order, on the other hand, does have that unity. They may be smaller, but not so much smaller that megastructure engineering like Starkiller Base is beyond them. They command impressive fleets of warships, they have tens of thousands of Storm Troopers; All quite awesome feats of logistics and organization.

I do find this whole discussion to be curious. In a web page where people act like train spotters, over analysing every aspect of RFC's 20 years old made up physics, we have people accepting such absolute rubbish physics.
A battle and chase across the universe has had super high tech star ships obviously travelling at very many times the speed of light. OK, they are now traversing a solar system, and can see each other, but to do meaningful travel even in those circumstances you have to be traveling at incredible speeds.
The "weapon that wins the battle" however consists of a lot of dumb iron gravity bombs, that are dropped (?) in microgravity, and fall onto the enemy ships.
OK, lets accept that the gravity field of the enemy extends outside the ship, and that it can't be reversed. It surely can be switched off. Another minor point, is (even in today's military) try hovering immediately and stationary above a major enemy unit. Even mounting the same bombs onto a torpedo body would have made some sense.
Another proposal was to use the bombs as a minefield. Hello, space is huge beyond comprehension and 3D. How many bombs would you need to sew as mines in open space to block all routes?

The whole scene was so improbable that it jolted me out of my enjoyment, into a critical observer role.

The E wrote:If you could point to the section in the operator's manual of the standard First Order gravity generator that lays out the procedure for reversing gravity, that would be great.

You assume, based on nothing whatsoever, that something is possible. When the film tells you that it isn't, or just has the audacity to imply that that might be the case, you're getting angry at the film.
I think the film isn't the actual problem here.

Daryl wrote:Hello, space is huge beyond comprehension and 3D.

Name a single battle in the entirety of Star Wars canon that was fought at "realistic" ranges. Or that operated on "realistic" rules of space combat.

Star Wars is space opera. It is not "hard" SF. It isn't MilSF. It uses the set dressing of SF, its visual language, but at its core, it is fundamentally a fantasy story.

I am quite astonished that someone who is in any way clued in to SF and its various subgenres would make such a basic mistake in classification.

The E wrote:If you could point to the section in the operator's manual of the standard First Order gravity generator that lays out the procedure for reversing gravity, that would be great.

Translation: “But- but- they can’t do that because handwavium!!”
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Bring out yer dead!!

Imaginos1892 wrote:Translation: “But- but- they can’t do that because handwavium!!”

Your assertion that they can "do that" doesn't have much of a foundation either. You say that it's "common sense" that they could, but as far as I am concerned, common sense doesn't really apply to a fictional technology that has no analogue in the real world.

Our current, real-world experience with artificial gravity shows that we can't "reverse the polarity": Whether you run the centrifuge this way or that doesn't make a difference to the perceived gravity vector, does it.

So, just like with any discussion about honorverse technology, if you make an absolute claim that something is possible or impossible, you better have some evidence found in the text of the work that supports your claim. To support my argument, I would point to all released Star Wars films, and the complete absence of any discussion about the rules that govern artificial gravity in that universe. We can infer that artificial gravity exists and that it is based on principles we do not know, since there are no giant grav rings anywhere in sight, but not much more beyond that.

Which parts of those ships were rotating? I must have missed that.

Artificial gravity generated by unknown means has to work the same as a spinning top? I must have missed that, too.

Canon: They generate unidirectional gravity fields without rotating segments OR the mass of a planet. They generate antigravity fields that lift gigantic ships within a planet's gravity, and they are sufficiently reliable to be routinely used over densely populated cities.

Corollary: They can generate gravity fields oriented in any desired direction BECAUSE THEY HAVE DONE JUST THAT IN EVERY MOVIE!!

Physical laws and engineering principles that change for the convenience of the plot are a hallmark of bad writing and Hollywood Stupid.
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Dayna: “Don’t you ever get tired of being right all the time?”
Avon: “No, I get tired of other people being wrong.”

Imaginos1892 wrote:Which parts of those ships were rotating? I must have missed that.

You didn't miss anything. None of them were.

Artificial gravity generated by unknown means has to work the same as a spinning top? I must have missed that, too.

No, my point was that whatever intuition you may have about a fictional technology based on unknown principles may not end up being confirmed.

Canon: They generate unidirectional gravity fields without rotating segments OR the mass of a planet. They generate antigravity fields that lift gigantic ships within a planet's gravity, and they are sufficiently reliable to be routinely used over densely populated cities.

Corollary: They can generate gravity fields oriented in any desired direction BECAUSE THEY HAVE DONE JUST THAT IN EVERY MOVIE!!

Yes, they have. But they've never reversed the direction in which these things work; repulsor lift devices always push against something, whether that is a starship's artificial or a planet's natural gravity. We do not know the principles behind that, just as we do not know the principles behind SW's artificial gravity in the first place.

In fact, the existence of those bombers, and the fact that they actually did work, puts a giant nail in your argument that it works that way. You can be angry about it all you want, curse the writers or producers all you want, but them's the facts.
Now, if you want to argue that this portrayal of SW's agrav tech is out of line with previous portrayals, feel free to do so. It's an incredibly silly argument to be having, in my opinion, but if that's the hill you've chosen to die on, so be it.

Physical laws and engineering principles that change for the convenience of the plot are a hallmark of bad writing and Hollywood Stupid.

Please cite the relevant physical laws that govern artificial gravity in the Star Wars universe. As convinced of the truth as you appear to be, you surely must be able to cite chapter and verse off of Wookiepedia....