why haven’t both sides been doing that all the time?
I feel like this can at least be backed up. It should be ridiculously costly in terms of sheer resources and personnel, and therefore utterly foolish in 99% of scenarios.
We can posit that hyperspace generators should be expensive in terms of resources and credits, and should get exponentially more expensive as the ship size increases, so making "hyperspace warheads" should also be foolish...
But on the other hand, to take down something like the Death Star, I imagine such a maneuver would have seemed worth it!
I think that sums up why the last two sequel films bothered me so much: They went for emotional "woah!"s by pulling things out of nowhere unexpectedly...But then you think about it for 5 seconds and it all falls apart quick.
The "subverting expectations" thing is was ruined it for me.
You could feel the "Too-clever TV writers" at work here. It felt like later-GoT and LOST where stuff randomly "just happens" and has zero payoff because it was written without any kind of grounding or plan, but it sure was surprising and subverted expectations!!! ...and then you catch on that there never was a plan, it was just a moment to get an emotional rise out of you, and nothing makes any sense outside of a very limited 5-minute window.
But it's a self contained story and doesn't get potentially-numerous "seasons" to come up with a reason "This totally makes sense, you guys. I had it planned all along!"
So yeah, what we're left with is a "deconstruction"...as in:
"Someone kept loosening bolts and pulling off panels until the hangar was a total mess, but they still don't understand how an X-Wing works...annnd CREDITS ROLL!"
Also, the way they completely dumped Finn's character and relegated him to "Guy who shouts 'RAAAAAAAAAY' every 10 minutes." is an absolute insult to competent acting and what could've been a beloved and deep character.