Surlethe wrote:SCRawl wrote:And yet these neutralization methods failed miserably on the previous attempt to corral the Falcon. It's too manoeuvrable for the same sort of tactics which took down the Tantive IV, and opening up the guns would have been effective at eliminating, not capturing, the ship and its crew.
Except that the
Avenger did open up with its light guns, and very quickly knocked down the
Falcon's rear deflector shields, which prompted Han's desperate charge at the
Avenger. It's obvious Captain Needa had every intention of eventually capturing the
Millenium Falcon, and that he did not expect the
Falcon to be able to outrun him STL. The same with Vader in the
Executor when Lando, Chewbacca, Leia, and Luke escape from Bespin: Vader believed the simple tactic of "run it down, knock out its shields, and tractor it in" were sufficient to corral the
Falcon.
(I know that the
Avenger was shooting at the
Falcon, of course, but they were being careful about it. I was implying that they could have stopped her by employing a less judicious amount of firepower, but that doing so would have had a strong likelihood of leaving no prisoners for Lord Vader to interrogate.)
I accept that Needa and Vader, respectively, expected this tactic to work. And it probably would have, if not for a few things, of course. I do hold, though, that some risk accompanies employing this tactic, and further that taking the route Vader did had even fewer risks. Of course, he didn't have to be quite so cute about it, with the lunch invitation thing....
Surlethe wrote:SCRawl wrote:Surlethe wrote:Are you certain of this? I thought the dialogue in ANH made it pretty clear that the ISDs were chasing the Falcon through hyperspace.
In ANH there was that pesky tracking device attached to the
Falcon. The strong implication was that if it had not been so equipped, tracking would not have been possible.
My understanding of the way hyperspace works is that you can't change directions once you're in it. Someone who doesn't want to be followed would make one or more jumps, changing directions at each one, so as to throw off would-be pursuers.
I'm talking about the jump away from Tatooine, where Han outruns the Imperial cruisers. It certainly implies that it's possible to give chase in hyperspace (and there's no reason a civilization with the ability to communicate FTL shouldn't be able to have FTL sensors).
Yeah, Batman pointed that out, and I get it now. Again, I point to my influences from reading SWTC early on in my explorations of Star Wars to explain my mindset. I always considered hyperspace travel to be exclusively unidirectional, undetectable and almost completely blind.
To specifically address your point, I can see how someone could come away with the position that pursuit in FTL is possible. I don't believe that I can directly refute that position with anything concrete, but I do anyways. See below for slightly more detail.
Surlethe wrote:SCRawl wrote:There were all those times when they weren't in the asteroid field, though, and yet were still facing imminent capture or destruction at the hands of the Imperial forces. (They didn't know that capture was the only item on the menu, of course.)
Whoops; I misread you: I thought you said "going to FTL inside an asteroid field" instead of "going to FTL instead of an asteroid field". My apologies.
In any case, if (as I assert, and Batman corroborates) it is possible to give chase FTL, there's no point in jumping when you're severely outclassed in terms of speed.
No apologies necessary; shit happens.
If it were possible to pursue in FTL, why don't we see it? At the end of ESB, we see Vader standing on the bridge as the
Falcon enters hyperspace, slipping from his grasp again. He doesn't tell his flunkies to try and track her, he just stalks away, completely dejected. If the
Falcon had been using an inferior, backup hyperdrive, I expect that things wouldn't have looked very different, and there would be no obvious way to tell that pursuit was any more possible than if it were using its primary unit. There's always the possibility that their sensors would reveal that a fleeing ship was using a low-end hyperdrive unit, I suppose.
73% of all statistics are made up, including this one.
I'm waiting as fast as I can.