just saw it.
- Why have the star destroyers gone super slow? In the previous movies they could match speed with the Millennium Falcon, now they can barely keep up with the rebel ships.
i'm not sure they are slower. note the transports were not much faster than either the Raddus or the FO fleet. and the transports appeared to be at least as fast as the fighters. i think it is more a case that on a chase through deep space (with no reference points) there is no way to determine how fast the ships were actually going. after all, we never saw Chewie and the falcon trying to pace the FO fleet, so the easiest comparison with the OT imperial SD's isn't possible.
plus, it is likely that the Raddus and the rest were redlining their engines.. which would explain why they were running out of fuel so fast.
(and it is possible the falcon just isn't all that fast in sublight.. it might be the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy, but that is its hyperspace speed, specifically)
- The lightspeed kamikaze maneuver: this is the real game breaker here. If a single cruiser can devastate a whole fleet, why not just build lots of LS engines on asteroids and throw them at opposing fleets? Why did the rebs even try to do a bomb run at the dreadnought when they could have just hit them with lightspeed strikes?
note that she had to do a bunch of extra stuff before she did it.. suggesting she was disabling safeties and such. plus that attack almost certainly
destroyed the ship.. trading a 3km heavy cruiser for the damage of a megastardestroyer and a few 2km SD's might be effective, the Republic remnants don't have all that many such ships left.. if any. while the FO have lots more star destroyers.
and btw, this is not the first time we've seen hyperspace attacks.. Hera Syndulla used it (with a U-wing) over Lothal in the Season 4 episode "Kindrid".. she took the U-wing to hyperspace while flying through a hangerbay-tunnel in a spacestation, destroying much of the station in the process. she survived because she had a clear flightpath.. it just was while threading the needle.
given K-2SO in Rogue One was concerned about surviving going into hyperspace with chunks of Jedha's crust all around them, i suspect that any ship that actually hits something while going into hyperspace is going to die. (and Han Solo did say
"Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star, or bounce too close to a supernova and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it.")
it is also worth noting.. one Bomber managed to destroy a 7.6km Star Dreadnought. the eight or so bombers the Resistance started with could probably have wrecked most of that FO fleet if they could get a clear bombing run in. the Ramming was a desperation move..
they didn't have any more bombers or fighters to work with, just a 3km heavy cruiser and a bunch of personnel transports.
- So Leia has got force powers now? Even without training?
who says she didn't have training? plenty of time between ROTJ and TFA/TLJ for luke to have taught her.
- How is Rey going to continue her training now that Luke is dead? Will he train her as a force ghost?
the same way that the very first jedi did.. trial and error, and figuring it out on their own. what the events of this film do basically is reset the clock.. the Jedi Order is dead, the Sith are Dead. all that remains is the force, two half trained but very powerful force users, and a lot of untrained force sensitives. Rey and Kylo Ren basically get to reinvent what it means to be a force user, create new traditions, new organizations. free from the Dogma's and blinkered viewpoints of the past.