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THE BAR posted:But if we have that kind of technology, wouldn't a remote-controlled drone mech make more sense? You can even have it shaped as a humanoid, but there's no reason to put an actual person inside of it by that point. Oh hey gen:LOCK, what are you doing over here in this conversation?
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# ? Feb 11, 2021 05:52 |
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# ? Apr 25, 2024 23:12 |
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:what happens if someone starts jamming the radio frequencies used for those remote operations? Tangentially, we discovered in a big way early in Iraq 2 that while putting all your eggs in the satcom basket was fine for peacetime, the bandwidth requirements for a fully networked military at war quickly overwhelmed everything the DoD had in space. They leased every bit of available commercial bandwidth, and started digging some old Vietnam-era toys out of the closet like HF radio. (All public knowledge at this point) That didn't even require a bad actor downing a satellite or two (which our major peers have the capability to do). If GPS goes down, a huuuugeee part of military functionality goes with it.
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# ? Feb 11, 2021 08:04 |
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my question re: remote control tanks was a hypothetical meant to back up my answer to "why do mechs have pilots instead of being remote controlled" and I am fully justified, thank u
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# ? Feb 11, 2021 10:44 |
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If you're using the human brain's natural motor controls, it makes remote control even worse because human brains do not like latency issues or occasional blackouts from the rest of the body. Although I guess arguing "why not just not risk soldiers directly" is almost on the level of "why not just not have any war" so far as criticisms go.
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# ? Feb 11, 2021 19:05 |
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Foxfire_ posted:Tanks: Getting a reliable radio signal on the ground when there's terrain and trees in the way is harder than in the air https://i.imgur.com/Uqo1EkQ.mp4
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# ? Feb 11, 2021 21:47 |
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drat right. drones are stupid looking and can't smile for the camera. sexy fighter pilots will sell a billion in warbonds and that's how you win wars.
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# ? Feb 12, 2021 14:23 |
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Fighter jets are really loving funny because literally any scenario they're actually meaningfully used is already the end of the world. The ending of Top Gun would probably spark a nuclear war.
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# ? Feb 12, 2021 16:08 |
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boo boo bear posted:drat right. drones are stupid looking and can't smile for the camera. sexy fighter pilots will sell a billion in warbonds and that's how you win wars. You could use that billion to buy another jet!
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# ? Feb 12, 2021 18:57 |
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Are Marvel comics style "the most powerful object in the universe" garbage technology or a plot trope? Like the Cosmic Cube. Once completed, you touch it and it grants your fondest wish, like the Triforce?!? Huh, never put that together before Only the ultimate plot macguffin carries with it that from the time you start construction to its completion, you are now enemies with everyone in the universe
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# ? Feb 12, 2021 19:23 |
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GD_American posted:Tangentially, we discovered in a big way early in Iraq 2 that while putting all your eggs in the satcom basket was fine for peacetime, the bandwidth requirements for a fully networked military at war quickly overwhelmed everything the DoD had in space. They leased every bit of available commercial bandwidth, and started digging some old Vietnam-era toys out of the closet like HF radio. yeah i remember reading years ago about bandwidth constraints, and how even before 2003 the satellite network was getting slammed with stuff like dipshit admirals sending multi-hundred-megabyte powerpoint files everywhere some goon once posted an anecdote about how some poor grunt in Afghanistan needed a file ASAP and it was some godawful big file and the Inmarsat link they had would get the transfer done in, like, several days.
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# ? Feb 12, 2021 20:30 |
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Fighter jets are really loving funny because literally any scenario they're actually meaningfully used is already the end of the world. The ending of Top Gun would probably spark a nuclear war. Incidents like that have happened historically, although I guess you could argue whether they were meaningful. And unfortunately there are a bunch of ways to use jets (bombing rebels, rebel controlled areas, rebel controlled hospitals, rebel controlled humanitarian aid, rebel controlled children, etc) which see pretty frequent applications.
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# ? Feb 13, 2021 03:52 |
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Okay but have you considered how fast they go and how cool they look
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# ? Feb 13, 2021 04:42 |
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Yes, ideally we would make a bunch of jets and then throw a G Gundam tournament every year or something.
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# ? Feb 13, 2021 04:46 |
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Nebakenezzer posted:Are Marvel comics style "the most powerful object in the universe" garbage technology or a plot trope? Bit of both. I mean the whole conceit of GotG is that the Infinity Stone in question is almost impossible to use without proper equipment without destroying yourself. It's a convenient way to make macguffins that don't necessarily bring up 'Why don't they just use x' for every single problem down the road. (reminds me of Dragon Ball, where they eventually DO start using them for everything from fixing the collateral damage from Vegeta throwing a tantrum to cosmetic surgery) Also that last bit reminds me of the victory conditions from Civilization: Beyond Earth; not a great game but some fun ideas. Every victory condition isn't something you can easily miss, but a huge construction that's very obvious to everyone and basically rings a bell for everyone to come try and blow it up or lose the game, meaning every game ends with a reason to finally use all those fancy toys you've spent it building.
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# ? Feb 13, 2021 05:02 |
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If you're building Gundams, as everyone has pointed out, the weak point is the pilot. Specifically, the pilot's body. So, remove the body:
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# ? Feb 13, 2021 05:35 |
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The Moon Monster posted:You could use that billion to buy another jet! galaxy brain: use that billion to start a second war!
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# ? Feb 13, 2021 09:03 |
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Fighter jets are really loving funny because literally any scenario they're actually meaningfully used is already the end of the world. The ending of Top Gun would probably spark a nuclear war. what? do you specifically mean 'used in large numbers' because fighters have engaged and shot down other fighters a bunch of times
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# ? Feb 15, 2021 22:45 |
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:is there any article that goes into why that movie is so crummy? like i guess there's a quote by one of the actors that the original script he got was great, and then when he showed up he got handed a rewrite that was back-to-back dogshit. i'm sure the answer is "chris roberts" but i'm a sucker for behind-the-scenes drama and bullshit It has been a while since I've read a deep dive on the subject, but from memory: Ever since Wing Commander III, Chris Roberts had made it clear that he was far more fascinated with making movies than making games. One of the terms of his exit from EA and Origin was that his new company, Digital Anvil, would have the rights to co-produce a Wing Commander movie with Origin. However, Roberts was completely unprepared for the realities of actual Hollywood moviemaking. A very heavy-handed producer, Todd Moyer, was assigned to the project by one of the companies that actually financed the movie, and Moyer brought in a complete neophyte screenwriter named Kevin Droney to rewrite the outline and treatment that Roberts had put together. Budget realities forced the production to shoot in Luxembourg on a horribly compressed schedule (something like a little over a month), and Digital Anvil--which was a PC developer, remember--had to work overtime to work on the visual effects, which were also handled by a horribly overworked team at Cinesite. The script was being rewritten during shooting and post-production was rushed to meet a release date, because they had a bonus coming from Fox to tie the movie's release with the Episode I trailer. Basically, everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. Timby fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Feb 18, 2021 |
# ? Feb 18, 2021 21:06 |
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I actually like a couple of the effects shots in that movie
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# ? Feb 18, 2021 22:26 |
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General Battuta posted:I actually like a couple of the effects shots in that movie Space bulldozer?
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# ? Feb 19, 2021 01:38 |
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Timby posted:It has been a while since I've read a deep dive on the subject, but from memory: Oof, that's rough. One thing I'll give the production credit for is that, while the interior spaces are still pretty wide open by submarine spaces, it felt like there was at least a token effort to convey a more cramped, naval feel to the ship interiors. I'm doubly impressed if they were navigating that while under the gun on the shooting schedule. Do you know if Roberts had intended to try and swing for getting the Wing Commander 3 and 4 casts for the movie and got overridden, or was it always the plan to go with a younger cast? I do remember thinking while watching the movie "was Malcolm McDowell really that much more expensive than David Warner? "
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# ? Feb 19, 2021 03:50 |
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I imagine the rates for hiring these people for full movies is a lot more than for a video game in the 90s
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# ? Feb 19, 2021 04:21 |
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Nebakenezzer posted:Space bulldozer? Definitely not that one although it is extremely funny.
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# ? Feb 19, 2021 06:00 |
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Oof, that's rough. The production designer on WC was the legendary Peter Lamont (Titanic, GoldenEye, Aliens), which is the primary reason the sets looked so goddamn good. He was a master at squeezing every single cent out of his budgets; for example, I believe it was Lamont's idea to use old Lightning fuselages for the Confed fighters, because they looked sufficiently high-tech and futuristic and were able to be rented out for next to nothing. As for the cast, only Hamill was really targeted (and he originally had a larger role as Merlin, Blair's shipboard and portable AI, before Merlin became a voice-only role; Hamill still did the voice but went uncredited). As I recall, the script was always "Blair and Maniac's first mission," so there wasn't really room for the WC3/4 cast. I think they might have approached McDowell but he was too busy with a bunch of DTV poo poo to get to Luxembourg. I'm sure he would have, though, since he's like Michaels Caine and Ironside in that he'll do just about anything for three hots and a cot.
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# ? Feb 19, 2021 06:13 |
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Regarde Aduck posted:what? I think he means "Between world powers" The last time that two great powers fought an air war was Korea, and even there the Russians went to great lengths to pretend they weren't the ones flying the planes. There have been a few things between less powerful nations like how India and Pakistan sometimes have tit-for-tat dogfights. And times like Vietnam where a world power has fought the airforce of a small nation. But something like Top-Gun where Russia and the U.S have an air battle would totally bring us to the verge of nuclear war.
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# ? Feb 19, 2021 22:23 |
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Looper feels like a movie that everyone just forgot about. Pity, since it has an interesting conceit for this thread: Time travel exists, it works, and it's illegal. The mafia in a lovely post-climate-collapse city use it for body disposal, with a shaky bootleg machine that they don't fully understand, and the core premise is basically how the superstitious mafiosos, including the protagonist, don't understand how it works, and make the wrong assumptions.
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# ? Mar 8, 2021 12:08 |
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Looper feels like a movie that everyone just forgot about. Pity, since it has an interesting conceit for this thread: Time travel exists, it works, and it's illegal. The mafia in a lovely post-climate-collapse city use it for body disposal, with a shaky bootleg machine that they don't fully understand, and the core premise is basically how the superstitious mafiosos, including the protagonist, don't understand how it works, and make the wrong assumptions. Wasn't it specifically that future authorities were really good at detecting and prosecuting murder (but not time travel I guess) so they send people back in time to be murdered?
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# ? Mar 8, 2021 12:28 |
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I thought that entire film was written to watch Joeseph Gordon levitt do a bruce willis impression for two hours.
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# ? Mar 9, 2021 03:52 |
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MRC48B posted:I thought that entire film was written to watch Joeseph Gordon levitt do a bruce willis impression for two hours. Yeah, and it’s great
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# ? Mar 9, 2021 04:37 |
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According to interviews, the reason they had to send people back in time to be killed was that everyone in the future was implanted with a microchip that would broadcast their location when they died, so killing them before there was anything to receive the broadcast was a way to bypass that. But I don't think that's even hinted at in the movie itself.
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# ? Mar 9, 2021 04:43 |
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Shwoo posted:According to interviews, the reason they had to send people back in time to be killed was that everyone in the future was implanted with a microchip that would broadcast their location when they died, so killing them before there was anything to receive the broadcast was a way to bypass that. But I don't think that's even hinted at in the movie itself. You would think a faraday cage would cost way less than a time machine. I assumed it was something way weirder.
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# ? Mar 9, 2021 04:45 |
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wdarkk posted:You would think a faraday cage would cost way less than a time machine. I assumed it was something way weirder. It was a plot contrivance to justify the concept. Whatever writer that was tasked with pulling it off with like 2-3 lines of exposition didn't get the job done.
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# ? Mar 9, 2021 05:46 |
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GD_American posted:It was a plot contrivance to justify the concept. Whatever writer that was tasked with pulling it off with like 2-3 lines of exposition didn't get the job done. They brought Shane Carruth in to punch up the time travel mechanics and it was just too complicated to make work in the story. So it’s like that, in that it doesn’t matter why the future mob does that, it only matters that a time machine is how they do it.
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# ? Mar 21, 2021 15:20 |
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Minimalist exposition is a lot trickier than it looks. Audiences generally have trouble accepting that characters in-universe are ignorant or wrong about something unless it's specifically pointed out, probably from a lifetime of stories that explain everything to them.
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# ? Mar 22, 2021 08:02 |
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Minimalist exposition is a lot trickier than it looks. Audiences generally have trouble accepting that characters in-universe are ignorant or wrong about something unless it's specifically pointed out, probably from a lifetime of stories that explain everything to them. At the same time, too many shows make characters carry the stupid ball (or whatever it was called) so it can be difficult to tell if a character is being deservedly ignorant or arbitrarily ignorant. And how many times have we seen that stupid trope where conflict is generated because two characters just refuse to talk to each other for five minutes only to have the situation spiral way out of control?
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# ? Mar 24, 2021 19:57 |
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Solkanar512 posted:At the same time, too many shows make characters carry the stupid ball (or whatever it was called) so it can be difficult to tell if a character is being deservedly ignorant or arbitrarily ignorant. And how many times have we seen that stupid trope where conflict is generated because two characters just refuse to talk to each other for five minutes only to have the situation spiral way out of control? "I don't have time to explain in 3 sentences what is going on, you just have to come with me" 3 days later "aaaaa i'm dying before I can tell you what's up"
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# ? Mar 24, 2021 19:58 |
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CainFortea posted:"I don't have time to explain in 3 sentences what is going on, you just have to come with me" Excellent example. Or like in the last season of GoT, we couldn't have Bran, Sansa and Arya sit in a room and talk for a minute. Nooo, that would make too much loving sense, if you can have someone with the ability to see and hear every time in history it's cheating to actually do it!
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# ? Mar 24, 2021 20:04 |
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CainFortea posted:"I don't have time to explain in 3 sentences what is going on, you just have to come with me"
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# ? Mar 25, 2021 00:31 |
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Minimalist exposition is a lot trickier than it looks. Audiences generally have trouble accepting that characters in-universe are ignorant or wrong about something unless it's specifically pointed out, probably from a lifetime of stories that explain everything to them. The Mandalorian did this very well. The series had a tonne of callbacks to the movies and references to the cartoons, but you didn't need to know any of it to enjoy and understand what was on screen. The characters would either eventually tell you exactly who they were, or were such a strong archetype that they didn't need to.
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# ? Mar 25, 2021 03:07 |
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# ? Apr 25, 2024 23:12 |
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All those convoluted explanations for sending Mafia hit targets back in time for Looper are really funny because all you need is the most basic one ever: dumping the body. A time machine would be the ultimate evidence disposal device.
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# ? Mar 26, 2021 12:28 |