Official Derailed thread... Wait, what?

I mean, I could totally science a reason for range to be a rational argument in a space battle. The weapon of choice in the Star Wars universe is the plasma bolt, sure a laser can fire for an infinite distance, and a ballistic weapon could certainly travel forever under it's own inertia, but a energized stream or bolt of plasma would probably start to lose cohesion and grow ineffectual if it didn't outright destroy itself after a certain amount of time/distance. For whatever reason this is the chosen weapon for everyone in the Star Wars series, with very few exceptions. Clearly they have lasers but for whatever reason blasters are superior (or maybe just cheaper) and clearly have taken over even straight projectiles/ballistics. It also has travel time which means the farther away from your target the easier it is to defend against or avoid entirely but the former makes more sense overall.

The shells could have had some kind of targeting or maybe wire guiding, there's precedence for this in Star Wars, magnetic mines and smart missiles at which point firing them at a ballistic arc would change the damage profile aiming more for the larger surface than the direct line. Also we did just talk about ships having their own gravitational field, so there's that. In fact even if the enemy ship didn't have a gravitational field a ballistic weapon would still follow a ballistic path until it escaped the gravitation field of the Star Destroyer.

Clearly the writers are idiots and I'm not even going to comment about the shuttle thing, I mean, the fuel idea was a stretch to begin with and entirely unnecessary, they could track their jump coordinates so anywhere they went they were going to be followed. Also running away from the enemy in normal space is idiotic fuel or no fuel because clearly that wasn't every ship in the First Order fleet, so all they needed to do was ask a couple more ships to jump in ahead of the rebellion. Game over. Sneaky stealth shuttles sure, I can dig it, why not sneaky stealth shuttle and jump your cruisers out forcing the order to follow, failing that then jump shuttles to every corner of the galaxy, it's not like they could follow every one of them simultaneously they were only tracking with one ship and apparently that took a shit ton of resources to do. Hell, even just splitting up the fleet when you figured out what they were doing would leave only one ship sacrificed. Considering they lost more than half of them just running away I think they're just completely retarded

But hey, go back and read John Carter, there are way worse scientific understandings, really the reason these are so poignant a failure is because they -tried- to science in a series that was never about the science.

 

The funniest things I've ever seen - besides the "gee, imagine if we used these artificial gravity generators for something more useful than holding coffee in coffee mugs" - has to be "let's close in on low orbit to get into range for our weapons so we can commence orbital bombardment".

That has to be one of the moments when the facepalm resulted in an actual concussion!

Certainly plasma weapons make terrible weapons without some means of containing the plasma charge - I mean, it's hot, it's going to want to expand like mad and there's literally zero friction across it's surface to stop it from expanding explosively.

We could entertain this thought and assume that maybe they don't have much in the way of sensors? Maybe space ship detection systems are based on various cupola across the hull of a ship where individual spotters use crank up phones to relay "I can see an X-Wing, lateral angle 315º, 33º elevation, approximately (uses a plastic ruler to measure visible size) umm.. 3 kilometers away, incoming".

Now, imagine someone with a fleet with powerful laser weapons suddenly showing up and opening fire from a few light minutes distance.

If we're trying hard to find in-verse reason for short range weapons, I could live with that if you see someone outside of your weapons range that you'd always just jump next to them and blast them with the immensely powerful short range weaponry or so and maybe they're optimized for quantity and ability to easily get up close and soak casualties?

In the originals they're constantly running into these situations where the Millennium Falcon gets surrounded by Star Destroyers from every direction.

But to me, ultimately it's like having your grandma explain to you how she survived when the enemy air forces raided her town.

Now, she may say things like "the bombers flew close and low and the small single engine bombers fired rockets and their cannons at us, the anti-aircraft batteries couldn't punch through their armor" - and that could all be wrong, it could be that no rockets were used, they were actually interceptor fighters strafing the town with their machine guns and not cannons. The enemy planes didn't have armor, a few were shot down contradicting that they could not be shot down - it was that it felt like they were all getting through.

In essence, the story tells of what happened really but the details are all wrong. It's more about who the people were, what they thought and felt and how they responded to the conditions, the essence of the situation and the difficult choices presented. The details don't really matter that much. "Grandma was a tough sport but she never really became the expert on aerial warfare".

Where the new SW went wrong for me was the story and characters. Though yea, also that Star Trekky kinda "our McGuffin grator next juvenator is very serious bad" makes a contrast to the atmosphere and feel to the originals where the themes and problems never really revolve around whether the McGuffin grator is polarized, fueled or past it's last maintenance date.

 

Agreed, like I said, if I want a science reason for what we see in the movie, there's plenty of ways to explain away the disparity based on what we see. The real question isn't what science can cover up bad writing, but why are they using this weapon system which seems to have more negative traits than positive. And really it comes down to just theorycrafting, a society with supposedly thousands of years of history has probably tried everything and possibly even forgotten the results multiple times.



I would like to know more about the effective limitations of our own laser weapon too, I know lasers sound like the ultimate in space combat, but I can think of plenty of reasons why they wouldn't be as great as they sound, most obviously simply cost in energy per watt of output. It takes an awful lot of energy to put out a beam of light capable of transmitting enough of that energy to another object to cause damage. Enough so that traditional electronics are hard pressed to perform efficiently. Superconductors may make these types of weapons more reasonable, but that's still something in the realm of rather difficult and expensive to use. I mean it's really hard to top a light speed delivery system, but honestly I'd think a ballistic system firing hyperspace rounds would still be more effective. Why the hell they're not using hyperspace rounds or maybe missiles...

 

Actually with shielding (even if it is physical mostly to protect from environmental hazards like radiation) wouldn't that make lasers slightly less effective?

I would assume heat is an environmental hazard even in space.

 

I wiil add that even if a movie doesn't attempt to explain its tech, it does need to at least follow consistent rules. In Star Wars, magic is a very rare, very exclusive club to belong to. Therefore, even if in their universe space is not a vacuum and ships have drag, that needs to be done the same way every time.

 

We might also have a thread for discussing theoretic futuristic combat and space combat.. I mean, that shit results in a quantity of posts and lines that literally requires a mouse to mount extra radiators to dissipate the heat produced by the scrollwheel.

Something entirely different, I actually managed to hit something during practice, first I deliver a minor wound to his let hand and then I aim for his heart.

 

Oh no, the fish are evolving! Now they're after our beer, tomorrow they're after our wives.

Breaking news:

Some of us are already sleeping with the fishes

 

I revisited my plan on making a chainmail armor.

Then the inevitable question popped up - "how authentic is it going to be, will the rings be riveted?"

"The simple process of riveting a ring"


And then I reminded myself of this very basic list of questions:
"How much do I really care about a thing such as authenticity?"
"Is there a way to be perfectly satisfied with the results with less stress?"
"How much stress exactly do I need in my life in addition to what I already have?"

I quickly accepted that I don't need rivets unless there's a super easy solution and I definitely don't care about historically authentic rivets or whether a Saxon spearman going at it with full intent and feral rage can penetrate the armor with his real spear.

 

"Do I want pockets?"

 

"If I do want pockets, do they also need to be made of mail?"

 

You know, you could just have small plastic pouches filled with slime. When you need to carry something you smash it against one of the pouches, breaking it. The item sticks to the slime which is mildly adhesive.

Elegance in simplicity.

 

Maybe if the slime was actually nanotech and adhesion could be applied and removed at the click of a button, sure. Biggest problem with simple adhesives is reliability, a strap or a pocket will provide simple indications when it is about to fail, visible fraying or holes in the material. Adhesives generally first indication of failure, is failure. 'oh but you could tether it' or I could just use a pocket . Also, slime is vile and I hate it.

 

Do you know why some military uniforms have a bunch of cords about the shoulder?

They used to one day be tethers. Then the items were no longer required but they kept the cords just in case. Then everyone forgot what the thing was that they were used to tether.

More seriously, the point with slime is that is miserable. This misery feeds Chaos gods. That's why the Slavs never win and can never be won.
You'll get the general idea when a thousands of bleeding diseased soldiers charge you supported by rust covered tanks that by all reason should not be able to run. And every time just before they're about to win some reactor blows up or something catastrophic awful happens to them.

Spoiler: NSFW Music Video

Attack of the Dead Men was a real event. 60-100 men of the Russian Empire who had survived the massive gas attack which utilized a combination of two gases which boosted eachother's effects charged the 14 attacking German battalions and routed them before many of them perished to the effects of the gas.

The music video above doesn't quite capture the grotesque detail of men who have their flesh peeling off of them and who are vomiting pieces of their lungs while standing and charging with blood coming from eyes, nose, etc. with the face itself partially dissolved and the skin hanging about.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourragère

But yes, we used tethers and pouches (and of course larger bags etc...) for everything before someone got the genius idea to sew a pouch into their clothes directly. I'm just glad they didn't decide to go with slime instead

 

Don't forget aiguillette and lanyard, there are also a couple other super specific examples but these are the primary ones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiguillette

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanyard

Spoiler: Historical examples

Lord High Admiral Clinton in an arming doublet of 1562, showing the decorative points or laces with metal tips for securing armour.



Still in use in WW1 as with this British pistol lanyard.


Swedish naval officer sword with lanyard, 19th century.

 

I didn't, it links them in the wiki for aigillette XD

 

Just good to remember in general that the Fourragere is a very specific type and most of the ropes and cords you see are of different significance, such as the one commonly worn by all US infantry. (if I got it right anway)