Tulip posted:

Not scifi and also bleak as gently caress: some military commanders consider child soldiers better than adult soldiers, because they're less loyal to their civil community and therefore more loyal to the military, and are less likely to balk at dangerous orders (citation: Dancing in the Glory of Monsters chapter 10).

Ghost Leviathan posted:

I think Top Gun and various pilot media (including Star Wars) is a heavy influence on mecha and Gundam in particular

Gravitas Shortfall posted:

If you've got a brain/machine interface then a humanoid mech makes a lot of sense because your pilot will have a lot of instinctive control over the mech, once they learn its range of motion and weight. Just have the pilot sitting or curled up in the torso.

Tulip posted:

The US doesn't even use autoloaders for tanks at this point.

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.

Farmer Crack-rear end posted:

Discovery at least represents more effort than a lot of the ship and fighter designs from the Star Wars sequels

Vernii posted:

The thing I hate most about the dreadnought is there were interviews with the design team about how they were using real life battleships for inspiration, and then they produced something that looked like a slice of pizza instead.

SlothfulCobra posted:

It's literally a more simplified star destroyer, practically deconstructed into just a flat triangle with a rectangle on top, and the only feature they added is the GIANT HOLE in the middle begging for people to attack it.

I think the issue is also intensified by how the space scenes kinda just have bad cinematography so they don't convey as much scale or movement.

Tulip posted:

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Probably came up before, but there's some hints in the prequels, I think explicit in some of the fact books, that the TIE design is descended from Jedi starfighters, where the lack of defenses was a good enough tradeoff for making full use of the capabilities of a precognitive, superhuman pilot.

Lazy Fair posted:

I enjoy trying thinking about what the older movies tell us about the Star Wars "canon" before much of the canon we're familiar with was actually developed in the books and games of the expanded universe.

In his trench run Luke says "We're going in full throttle, that ought to keep those fighters off our backs!" but the TIEs don't seem to have any problem catching up, implying the TIE is much faster than the X-Wing and Luke as a greenhorn pilot doesn't recognize this.

PoptartsNinja posted:

Speed holes make everything worse.

Solkanar512 posted:

Are there no private shipbuilders in the EU, or a Star Wars version of Anaheim Electronics that are either outside the Rebel/Imperial conflict or more likely just supply both sides anyway?

chiasaur11 posted:

This season of anime got a decent submission for the pile in the Juggernauts from 86.

Officially, they're drones to fight a clean war. They're pretty lowest bidder for spider-tanks. Tin armor, 6 pound cannon rather than something beefy like a Rheinmetall Rh-120, and they tend to take serious damage when stressed, but hey. There's a price you pay for a 0 percent casualty rate.

Off the record, they're actually piloted by members of ethnic minorities who have been left outside the safety of the walled cities to die as human shields for the upper class.

Like the ATs from VOTOMs, they're mechs explicitly called out in the narrative as deathtrap pieces of poo poo, both to highlight the uncaring nature of command, and to show the skill (and superhuman abilities) of the protagonist in staying alive anyway.