I'll steal a comment from elsewhere [1] that gives a perfectly reasonable justification for this. > A few hypothetical reasons why light speed attacks are not

I'll steal a comment from elsewhere [1] that gives a perfectly reasonable justification for this. > A few hypothetical reasons why light speed attacks are not common despite being so effective: > - A capital ship's particle shields can usually tank smaller objects, like fighters, traveling at relativistic speeds. Only very large objects can attain enough kinetic energy to punch through the shields. However... > - ...the size and complexity of the engines required to accelerate an object to light speed increase geometrically with mass. Outfitting a dense asteroid with a hyperdrive system would make for a hideously expensive one-shot missile; it's almost always more practical to invest your year's worth of Mon Cala's GDP in a ship, which has broader sustained applications. > - The calculations for hyperspace jumps to or from gravity wells are incredibly fraught. Because of latency issues and certain limitations of droid cognition, an extremely skilled pilot must be physically onboard to perform the jump; no one wants to waste a pilot like that on a suicide run unless there's no other option. > - Even a skilled pilot is going to find targeting an individual ship very difficult because extreme velocity and distances turns small errors into big misses. The timing is also crucial; in the Star Wars universe, ships enter a hyperspatial dimension shortly after hitting light speed. If Holdo had accelerated too quickly, she would have passed "through" the Supremacy without hitting it; too slowly, and she wouldn't have accumulated enough energy to overwhelm its shields. > Holdo only succeeded because a bunch of factors aligned: she was a good pilot, her target was very close and very wide, she had no nearby allies in the blast radius, she and her ship were expendable, and the math broke her way. [1]: https://fanfare.metafilter.com/10441/Star-Wars-The-Last-Jedi#167147 https://fanfare.metafilter.com/10441/Star-Wars-The-Last-Jedi...