Timeline technicalities... I need help!

As I understand it was no less than a week. The next time we see Vader after the capture of the Tantive IV, he is in the company of Tarkin, who brings news that the senate has been dissolved. Given that Leia was a senator, she would have known of the imminent dissolution of the senate at least a few days beforehand, and since she claims that, "The senate will not sit still for this," She had to have believed that the senate was not threatened.

That's my take on it.

I've actually been wondering lately how long the hyperspace journey from Tatooine to Alderaan took the Millennium Falcon. We see Han Solo saunter out of the cockpit immediately after making the jump to lightspeed, and Luke is training with Obi Wan. They have a discussion about the Force, Luke trains a bit, and Obi Wan senses the destruction of Alderaan. Then Han says they're coming up on the planet. While they're all still chilling in that room! Apparently only minutes later! How long did that take??

Boshuda

Maybe they secretly used the travel-by-map button and the camera missed it.

Military grade and illegally modified hyperdrives are pretty fast. Let's say Han took 30 minutes - 2 hours updating his Facebook status and checking out his other smuggler friends' baby and food photos then came out of the cockpit pretending he had been pressing buttons FOR HEROISM'S SAKE! to impress the others, it took Darth Maul less than a single Tatooine night to travel there from Coruscant.

Personally, I'd put high end hyperdrive figures at less than half a day to travel from one end of the galaxy to another and beat up hyperdrives 3-5 days to do the same. Longer only if they're blazing their own trails between the stars instead of using the proper lanes with S-thread beacons. Tatooine - Alderaan - Coruscant hyperdrive lane is very much established.

Apparently, in the novelization of ANH, the trip to Alderaan took at least several hours. The remote Luke was working with didn't just zap him, but knocked him out cold each time it landed a hit, but they shortened that part, among others, for the sake of the movie. I read about it somewhere but can't quite recall where.

There's a lot of speculation as to why certain trips took hours and others took a day or more. I figure it depends on how many course corrections or detours a ship has to pop back into realspace to make. I like the established safe routes explanation, but I don't see a trip across the galaxy taking less than a week even for a straight shot with a top-notch hyperdrive, assuming the galaxy far far away is about the same size as ours at approx 120k light years across.

May be of help (or not)

The EU got its big start from the original WEG Star Wars RPG. In that game system, space distances are measured in time taken to get there on a 'standard scale'.

Hyperdrives are rated in comparison to this standard.

A level 5 hyperdrive would take a five times the 'standard' time frame to get somewhere.

A level 3 hyperdrive would take three times the 'standard' time to get somewhere.

The Millenium Falcon has a 0.5 Hyperdrive, which means it take half the standard time to get somewhere.

(I suspect this game system convention was built around the Millenium Falcon's drive, using Han's boast as the primary reference: 'She'll make point-five past lightspeed. WEG took that to be a typical reference for a hyperdrive's efficiency, and voila...we get the above system.)

Anyways, this is how it began, though I'm sure it came about AFTER the movies were made and retrofitted to the way the galaxy works.

In my game I always give a modifier based on how well established the hyperlane is. Basically the difference between following a major freeway, a back road, or blazing your own trail cross country, but I can't remember if that was part of the game system, or I just house-ruled it.

A quick look at the second edition core book for WEG STAR WARS says this:

'Base travel time guidelines:
Within a sector: A few hours to a few days
Within a region: A few hours to a few days
Nearby region: Several days to weeks
Across the galaxy: Several weeks to several months.'

'There is no known route that travels straight across the galaxy. Even the fastest of ships, such as the Millennium Falcon, would take months to cross the entire galaxy, if such a route did exist.'

The bit about hyperdrive ratings has been pretty standard through time, in the various RPGs and EU books and such. But that time scale is a big departure from the later versions - several months to cross the galaxy?? I don't see how that's possible... Even the Death Star seemed to get to Yavin pretty quick... And what about the end of Empire when they fly the falcon to the Rebel rendezvous at the very edge of the galaxy?

Boshuda

I guess it's a matter of perception.

The only way we know time is going by during travel in Indiana Jones Movies is with the dotted-line on the map montage...but if we didn't know what we know about the Earth, we could conclude each of those jaunts was merely an hour or so, if that.

Doing realistic time jumps is never possible in movies. The reason is because no one want's to watch people play chess for hours/days/months while you travel through hyperspace, or see Luke get hit by lazers for hours/days/months while in hyperspace.

Movies and Games suffer from lack of realism, but it's in order to keep people entertained that they do it.

If you want a real scale of what it would take to cross from one side to the other, you're being way to exact, and will have to do a time skip anyway, because no one wants to roleplay being stuck on a ship with nothing to do.

My opinion.. Don't worry about how long it took to get there, just get on with the game :)

Well, normally that is true Xan...

Except that sometimes it is an important factor to the resolution of a plot point.

As for the original post...why had it suddenly become important?