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Poor Design Choices In the Star Wars Universe
Ant writes "John Scalzi's AMC blog shows a short guide to the most epic FAILs in Star Wars design — 'I'll come right out and say it: Star Wars has a badly-designed universe; so poorly-designed, in fact, that one can say that a significant goal of all those Star Wars novels is to rationalize and mitigate the bad design choices of the movies. Need examples? Here's ten ...'"
The whole point, I believe, is that the chamber is gigantic, and that representatives really needed to fly to get to the center and speak.
If you allowed people to just do a videoconference from their seats, what's the point of meeting in Wash^H^H^H^H Coruscant? Everybody could stay at their home planets and telecommute!
No sig for the moment.
Yes, they're never referred to as 'lasers' or similar in the films. The books describe them as ionized gas throwers, like the PPGs in Babylon 5. In fact, if they were coherent light beams you wouldn't be able to see them, the only reason you can see them from the side is that they are projectiles that are glowing.
Turbolasers, on the other hand...
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"This [indicates the staff weapon] is a weapon of terror. It is designed to strike fear into the enemy. This [the P90] is a weapon of war. It is designed to kill the enemy."
Also, Chewbacca only visited Endor. He never lived there. That guy was a bad lawyer.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
Here's something interesting:
90% of shots fired in gun fights miss, even when the shooter is a cop, and even when they aren't supposed to miss.
These are guys who are trained, have to qualify at various distances at a pistol range, etc.
But it turns out that putting your shots on target when ... is really difficult in real life.
- the lighting/visibility is poor
- the target is trying not to get shot
- you aren't under ideal cover
- you may be shooting off-handed or without proper time to posture/setup the shots
- you weren't expecting to shoot anyone today and now you're in a firefight
- THEY ARE SHOOTING BACK [!!]
So I'm not defending variable-grade shooting in the movie, but in the real world, _good_ marksmen who train constantly often do not make good shots in the heat of the moment.
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That's not a giveaway -- could easily be a stereotype, rather than a clone.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Bull. Menelaus needed to go after his "kidnapped" wife because he had the same claim to Sparta as Phillip II of Spain had to being King of England, that he had married the Queen Regnant and was supposed to shut up and get her pregnant; if she wasn't kidnapped, Paris of Troy gets to be King Matrimonial, and Menelaus is once again Agamemnon's little brother with few prospects. Agamemnon supports his brother's Quest because it is a Casus Belli to justify pillaging Troy. If it had been ended by the duel between Menelaus and Paris, the whole war would have been a failure, from the Argive perspective.
Women were no more simple commodities when they were major heiresses than was Eleanor Of The Aquitaine a simple commodity in the Middle Ages.
Yeah, WWII dogfights between messerschmitts, spitfires and mustangs
-=[ place
Nonsense. A tsuba is an integral part of a practical katana. Only decorative or ceremonial long blades occasionally (e.g. shirisaya) lacked them. The tsuba didn't just protect the wielder from an opponent's blade, it also prevented the wielder's hand from sliding onto the blade during thrusts. Fighting with a tsuba-less sword would be folly.
Given that the US Army has a minimum height requirement for Military Police MOS I don't consider that the short stormtrooper question must indicate that they are clones.
Marksmanship of imperial forces is easily explained by the steamroller principle. If you have a seemingly endless supply of soldiers (and you are not overly concerned with casualties), it is not important to outfit them with anything more than mediocre equipment. The cost savings in ammunition and equipment allows the empire to readily equip new conscripts or "clones", as it were.
This concept has historically worked adequately enough for China and Russia. It's a small irony that the AK-47, a communist-bloc weapon designed to be the ultimate bargain-basement firearm, was extremely competitive with much more expensive counterparts in the US/NATO arsenal.
At the risk of being out-geeked; in the original trilogy it wasn't stated that the storm troopers were clones, they're just some generic jackbooted thugs with masks so you're not tempted to empathise with them (the contractors on the other hand...).
IIRC some of the earlier Star Wars novels explained the 'clone wars' as being a failed attempt by the empire to clone bazillions of guys to crew their star destroyers. Turned out the clones didn't have <strike>souls</strike> a presence in the force and went insane or something. So the storm troopers not clones, just some mooks in plastic armour.
.evom ton seod gis eht
I thought the article was really funny. However, it's clear that Scalzi hasn't spent much time fencing. Real fighting with an edged weapon is nothing like theatrical fencing—which is what Scalzi is apparently thinking of.
In theatrical fencing, the idea is to simulate a real fight without actually risking injury to the actors, who are usually not wearing fencing masks. Thus, there's a great deal of jumping around and clashing of blades. In a real fight (or even a saber fencing bout), there's only two reasons why the combatant's blades would ever come into contact: either they are parrying, or they are trying to beat their opponent's weapon out of line to create an opening. Usually, the contact of blade on blade is only momentary—you want your blade free to move at all times.
There is one exception to this. Sometimes, a parry or beat will result in a "bind"—a maneuver something like arm-wrestling, the purpose of which is to get the upper hand through main force by pushing your opponent's weapon out of the way. Because you are pushing against his blade, friction and the angle of the forces involved prevent your blade from "sliding" down to his hand. In any case, there are well-known maneuvers for disengaging from an unwanted bind.
In a light-saber battle, your primary targets would probably be your opponent's hand and wrist, just as it is in epee and saber fencing today. This is not because you "slide down the blade" of your opponent, but for the simple reason that the hand holding the saber is the part of your opponent that is closest to you. It could be argued that hand guards like those found on contemporary epees or sabers would be a good idea for these fictional weapons...but then you might as well go for full body armor.
If I were going to object to the light-saber battles in Star Wars on grounds of realism, it would be that they last far too long. A real battle with nearly weightless edged weapons that can cut through anything shouldn't last more than 10 seconds.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
Not only would it dissipate quickly, it wouldn't travel any further than the width of an atom. Take the moon mission as example, where the LEM traveled through the vacuum between the earth and the moon. Any sounds made by the men inside traveled to the surface of the vessel, and then stopped. There may have been one or two hydrogen atoms clinging to the skin that were "pushed off" by the sound's vibration, but that hardly qualifies as sound.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall