Keep in mind that POV characters are almost uniformly flying: A) Republic or Imperial Naval vessels with galactic R&D resources at their disposal and the ability to ignore "speed limits" and other travel restrictions. B) Rebel or smuggler ships which by definition do not obey restrictions or technological governing devices limiting their capabilities. C) Jedi vessels whose pilots can use the Force to find faster routes and who enjoy pretty much every exemption there is. Civilian travel is a whole different experience. We rarely see "how the other half flies," but the Lando Calrissian trilogy is notable for showing the kind of hoops civilians have to jump through at the mercies of customs agents and space traffic cops, and it's made particularly clear in Before the Storm, where civilian ships take four days just to get out of Coruscant's orbit, but all the main character ships have military waivers that let them hotdog it around at will.
We also had those fun traffic lanes for Kuat and Brentaal, in which you could apparently spend days just trying to get to the planet at sub light if you were not government or a guild ship.
Nice thread!!!! And I soooo agree with the hyperspace travel-times from the various RPG sources (first WEG, then WotC, and now FFG), which makes the GGFA so much more realistic and, in my opinion, enjoyable. It is ridiculous that Emperor Palpatine travels from Coruscant to Mustafar in mere hours (or even less): if this was the case, people of the Core would go shopping in the Outer Rim every 'weekend', and the outer regions would not be as desolate as they are... In my enjoyment of the GGFA (and for my timeline), I use the days/weeks given by the RPG books for traveling... Dad on Coruscant: "Hey, you know the XP-38 is 100 credits cheaper on Tatooine than it is at our local shop? Mom on Coruscant: "If we order it now, it will arrive just in time for our son's birthday in two days!" Yeah, right...
Stumbled of this just as I sat and teared my hear over hyperspace travelling in a fanfic I'm writing... Great thread - and thanks jasonfry for the input. I think the "speed of plot" is a very good term. Luke spending weeks on Dagobah certainly explains a few things - and opens up for ideas of what happened between Han and Leia as it took them so long to arrive to Bespin Must have been some ups and downs there... As for Zahn, I take my hat off for him trying to bring some sense into the mess.
Yeah, it always made more sense to me that when you give a number value and say that it is x "past" lightspeed, that the higher the number is, the faster you're going.
In the films, it just doesn't take that long to go anywhere, including Core to Outer Rim. Anyway, we should be at Alderaan about oh-two-hundred hours. This will be a day long remembered. It has seen the end of Kenobi and it will soon see the end of the Rebellion.
I think he is listing the time of day in that one, though you would also have to also consider that they have already been in hyperspace for a while as well.
I also wonder if, in terms of a "retcon," because I'm sure it wasn't the intention at the time, that it was the start of another leg. Everyone seems pretty well settled in the room, and it's implied that Luke and Obi-Wan have been at it for awhile. Han joins the party and to say, "You can forget about those Imperial slugs; I told you I'd outrun them" seems really out of place if it's something that happened quite some time ago. I'm sure that, at the time, it was meant to refer to the ImpStars over Tatooine, but now it might be considered Imperials they ran into elsewhere.
On most days I do. Didn’t the ANH novel actually explain it with them getting followed from Tatooine? Don’t have it on hand to check, but I could have sworn Han sort of already hints at the Vector tracing system for following things through hyperspace we later learn more about at that point.
The novel says nothing of the sort. Its treatment is essentially the same as the film. "Can't nobody track another ship accurately at supralight speeds." - p114
Thx for checking . Must have been another place where it is brought up. Though the implication here would also be that all you have for trying to catch a ship in hyerspace is to follow its jump vector as you can’t properly track the ship in hyperspace itself.
(this coming from a guy who quoted a direct page number and quote from the return of the jedi novelization to prove that (this---->) video couldn't happen... (cookie if you can find the quote..)
