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In most Star Wars battles, the ships shoot lasers at each other.

In Rogue One and RotJ, however, ships physically colliding with other ships won battles. In Rogue One, a capital ship collided with the planetary shield, deactivating it.

When an opponent comes at you with a space fleet, why doesn't a space admiral take an unarmed, unmanned hunk of metal and hyperspace it right through the enemy? Why do they just mess about with little lasers?

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  • Related, possible duplicate: scifi.stackexchange.com/q/138226/51379
    – Adamant
    Dec 29, 2016 at 4:26
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    It’s quite unlikely that an object within hyperspace can damage an object outside of hyperspace, as detailed in the linked question. They’re basically in different places. It has to revert to ordinary space (probably not literally within the object), and it’s certainly limited with respect to the speed it can have when it does that.
    – Adamant
    Dec 29, 2016 at 4:30
  • Also related: scifi.stackexchange.com/q/138223/64504
    – Adamant
    Dec 29, 2016 at 4:30
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    And also, they aren’t usually firing literal lasers at each other (despite the occasional misleading language).
    – Adamant
    Dec 29, 2016 at 4:31
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    Nice job predicting the plot of The Last Jedi!
    – pk_
    Dec 21, 2017 at 18:25

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This is addressed, or rather handwaved, in Rise of Skywalker. The Holdo Maneuver is said to be a one-in-a-million long-shot. It was only possible because the Rebels had days to plan it out (and presumably perform the required hyperspace calculations) and because their enemy was stupid enough to put itself in a big long line directly behind the ship they were chasing.

Beaumont leaned forward. “We need to do some Holdo maneuvers,” he said. “Do some real damage.”

Before Poe could answer that they couldn’t afford to sacrifice anyone, Finn jumped in with “C’mon that move was one in a million. Fighters and freighters can take out their cannons if there are enough of us.”

Rise of Skywalker: Official Novelisation

Note that this is then subverted (a second time) at the end of Rise of Skywalker as we see a Star Destroyer cut in half in the sky above the Forest Moon of Endor, apparently the result of a freighter doing "a Holdo Maneuver" on them.

Holdo Maneuver: Above the Forest Moon of Endor a Resurgent-class Star Destroyer was split in two by a heavy freighter entering hyperspace on a collision course.

enter image description here

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  • And That's why you've got to build bypasses! Feb 7, 2022 at 1:51

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