My conception of this was that the Resistance doesn’t know who or what is being targeted. They just found out about another planet-destroying weapon, and rush to launch a pre-emptive strike. We know they’re targeting “The Republic,” but the Resistance doesn’t appear to know what they are going to do. (This is something I infer based on the structure of the edit, but it’s not necessary for the audience to infer it the same way as I have.) If we are able to use the deleted scene where Leia sends her envoy to the Senate, it would help sell the idea that they don’t know it’s that system that will be destroyed. I don’t think construing the Resistance as believing they are the target would work well onscreen. Targeting the Resistance after destroying Hosnian Prime might work in theory, but I don’t know how we’d do that.

I could trim the trench run slightly, removing lines, “I need some help, here, I need some help,” and, “Comin’ in,” along with an establishing shot of a stationary gun.

And, Ridley, that looks great! I’m already able to render my own crawls, using JackPumpkinHead’s Blender template that mimics Adywan’s crawls. I just had to tweak the timing. BUT, if you wanted to render a version of yours, it couldn’t hurt for me to compare them and decide if either of them edges the other out. It’s up to you, though.