u/wheretheinkends

WEG developed a sliding scale of 1 (fast) to increasing numbers (higher is slower) with the falcon having a 0.5 hyperdrive. This is due to a throwaway line in ANH "she'll make point 5 past lightspeed."

Now, IRL it was just a throwaway line to show the falcon was fast, and Lucas had no underlying worldbuilding.

But given that Lucas was kinda a gear head, and the falcon was sorta looked at as a hot rod (kinda like how old moonshine smugglers would use hot rods to smuggle moonshine) i think the "past point 5" could have been interpreted better than "a .5 class hyperdrive.

Think about it, in the world of street racing (especially in the 70s with Detroit Iron muscle cars) a common rating of how fast a car is (when bragging) is saying its quarter mile time. Now often racers dont say "she can go a quarter mile in 13.1 seconds ( what a 70 hemi cuda ran in 1970)....but they will say "she can run a quarter mile in under 13 seconds"....but often will shorten it to "she can run less then 13 seconds."

So, given the context, it very would could have been interpreted that "point 5 past lightspeed" wasnt listing the class of hyperdrive, nor was it listing "she can go times 0.5 past the speed of light" but more saying "she can run .5X past lightspeed Y", where X is a measurement of an unspecified time and X is an unspecified length of lightspeed."

Sure, it was quicker and easier for WEG to just say "well, he said point 5 and lightspeed so thats the class of the hyperdrive" however I think it would have been a better service (and honor the fact that Lucas was a big gear gead and some of his ideas about the hero ship came from automotive enthusiasts culture) to put just a tiny bit more thought into it and "hot rod" it up a bit.

Yes I know Im like 40 years too late to change WEG mind over it and that the hyperdrive classes are ingrained into star wars canon and most SW ttrpg games outside of homebrewing....but rewatching ANH I was wondering if anyone had any similar thoughts on it.

So, in the OT we had airspeeders, both the T47 "snowspeeders" and the Bespin cloud cars. Both seemed to need forward motion (i.e., other than whille moving to take off, they seemed to be unable to hover in place). Landspeeders seemed to act like regular cars that cpuld just hover a few feet above the ground. We also got a model of a t16 skyhooper that acted as a plane.

Then the PT gave us coucscant (sp) with car type speeders that seemed to be able to fly and hover in place, and gave us the LAAT gunship that acted more like a hybrid of a plane and a helicopter.

Now, historically in SW all spacecraft has been consistent, i.e. they can hover, probably due to larger more powerful engines or whatever. But, should the t47s, the legends V-wings (not the PT ones, but the old plane looking Vwings), cloud cars, etc all be able to hover? Or should they require fowards movement to stay in the air? I perfer the latter personally, but if the former is true....idk to me it complicates things.

Its seems orginally Lucas has a clear division..landspeeders were cars (and they couldnt fly), airspeeders were planes and needed foward movement to stay in the air, and spaceships could fly in space and the air and hover.

Lucas has always been a revisionist, so when the PT happened he revised it and some cars could now fly like planes. So the question Im trying to work out is, what type of airspeeders can hover, and what type of airspeeders need foward movement. Is is speed based (i.e., "plane" type airspeeders can go really fast so for some reason they cant hover and "car" type airspeeders cant go as fast so they can) or is it something else.

Im trying to come up with a logic of which can and why (and yes I know that often times logic and SW dont mix, because often the answer is "whatever works for the plot at that specific moment" or "whatever seems coolest---do you want a top gun airspeeder or a muscle car hot rod airspeeder, and just do that."

edit so I did a brief glance through some shows and some youtube videos. First I checked the chase scene in attack of the clones, then a chase scene in fifth element (yes I know not SW so bear with me). Both showed similar traffic patterns, orderly near lines....just of multiple levels. Both showed the heros (anakin in AOTC and john mclain INNNN SPPPACCEEE in the fifth element doing stunt driving (anakin does a barrel roll) in unique cars (anakin has what appears to be a sports car and mclain is in a taxi cab) in the fifth element as you violate certain traffic laws AI automatically deducts points from your license. In 5th element mclain takes autopilot off.

So, ai assume coucscant traffic most cars either have autopilot and, when you want to drive manually has some sort of markers on screen that you must follow or you quickly lose your flight license.

I then checked other SW media...in Andor we see similar traffic patterns but Andor physically drive mothmas car. In Maul Shadowlord >!Janix is built upwards similar to coucscant but has regular roads, just elevated ones. In fact a couple of times the heros jump from an elevated road to a non elevated road via gravity....so even though the city is built up the planets doesnt allow flying cars for civilians I guess? !<

So, maybe its this:.

Each planet has different laws about if you can or cannot fly your car. Im assuming the planets that dont allow it simply install an altitude governor to prevent the speeder from reaching a certain height. Any speeders bought on that planet probably have the altitude either hardwired in or has restrictions on engines (for example, IRL if you bought a mid 90s nissan 240 in the US you would get a similar engine the nissan hardbodies have....however if you bought in Japan it would have had a better engine that the car was actually designed for....

so back to SW, on if you bought speeder X that was designed for a 800 foot altitude limit on coucscant and imported it to Janix you would be required to install a limiter on it, buy the same speeder on Janix and you dont get the JDM SR20DET motor, you get the one with the KA24DE motor that has an altitude limit of only 4 or so feet....you wanna fly you gotta import the SR20DET motor and hope the cops dont find out cause then youll get your speeder impounded.

Thats as near as I can fiqure that the same tech would have different limits in a galaxy wide setting that has solved gravity and has easy space travel.

Now this edit is very hastily put together....I work nights and had to do a voulentold overtime and havent slept yet so....I look forward on hearing everyones thoughts on this after I wake up from a mini-como

Cavet: when I say main guns I mean the large turrets on either side of the ship bridge tower. So if you look at models of the ISD I and II used in the movies (the ISD I has 4 main guns on either side (3 dual turbolasers and 1 dual ion cannon per side) the ISD II has 4 ocelt (8 barrel) turbo lasers per side).

Ive been trying to find a good closest to canon picture of the Victory I and II to determine the amount of main guns. Fractalsponge has a Victory I model (fan made) that shows three large double barrel turbolasers (of a different type than the ISD-Is) and there are several pictures online where is *looks* like there are 4 turrets on either side with an undermined amount of barrels. I was wondering if there was a consensus on the amount and barrel type of the main gun placments.

Furthermore, the wing extensions on either side of the ship. They are said to be covering large missile batteries (legends (old EU) says that the missile batteries were removed on the Victory IIs, canon/new EU says they are still there). However old EU says that they are foils to help the ship handle atmosphere, as old EU said that the Victory was the largest star destroyer type ship capable of going in atmo. The Victory I could land (much like the predecessor of star destoyers in ROTS) Im not sure if old EU allowed the Victory IIs to land or just perform low atmo maneuvers.

That being said, we have seen now in Rogue One that ISD-Is cannot only operate in low plantery atmosphere but also remain stationary long enough to deploy landing craft. In Old EU the Victory SDs had a very unique role, even with newer ships a Victory could remain relevant even with the introduction of the newer ISD Is and IIs....allowing low atmosphere operations and troop/vehicle deployments while still maintaining the intimidation of a star destoyer that you just dont get with Gozanti and other type cruisers.

Now that the ISDs can operate in low atmo I feel like the Victory's are obsolete. Which is fine, the military industrial complex marches foward and makes vehciles obsolete all the time....but I wonder what your guys thoughts are on this? Is Victory class SDs even truly canon anymore....or are they a hold over from old EU with the Venator pre-SD class taking the place of what the Victory was. To clarify, old EU the Victory bridged the republic and the empire, but now is it just Venator straight to Imperial?

I wonder if people just called it navy because starfleet was synonymous with star trek, or if its just because WEG and some star wars novels uses the term navy. Im wondering if Lucas' orginal intent was for the imperial ships to be called starfleet and not the imperial navy....or am I forgetting a line in the OT.

What do you guys think...more appropriate to call it the navy or starfleet and are they specific, closer to OT/movie cannon Im missing?