Shittiest piece of garbage tech in science fiction

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Sci-Fi Wi-Fi > Shittiest piece of garbage tech in science fiction

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

It's the stargate, the loving stargate is the shittiest garbage to ever drop from the rear end of a civilization, it was made by engineers obeying the engineer code of ethics which is 'why would anyone use this device in any way except the correct way?'

Wow a big ring that can dial any other big ring in the galaxy, allowing instantaneous travel between stars on foot! That's a wonderful invention, we should install it everywhere and build them so well that even when we gently caress off and turn into balls of light everyone who's left behind can keep using them.

Only (only!!!) there are a couple catches:

1. Unlike a telephone, a stargate wormhole is unidirectional: once you dial, your wormhole is outgoing, you can send stuff through it but nothing can come back from the receiving end without disconnecting and redialing from that end.

2. When you activate the stargate it shoots out a giant vortex of death that annihilates anything in its path. If you're on the receiving end there's no warning before this happens, so the stargate just randomly vaporizes whoever is standing in front of it whenever it's dialed.

3. There are four ways to walk into an active stargate pair: front side of the dialing gate, back side of the dialing gate, front side of the receiving gate, back side of the receiving gate. Three out of four of these approaches are instantly and irreversibly fatal! If you enter an active stargate from any side except the front side of the dialing gate, you cease to exist. And there is no way to tell which is which!!! No warning lights, no loving signage, no "this is a receiving gate, stand clear" siren. Just instant subatomic annihilation if you make the slightest mistake (or you're a curious indigene who's just seen the giant metal ring turn on and you want to see what happens inside it). Death!

4. Just for laughs the gate somehow has the ability to draw power from a black hole. And in this mode it can't be deactivated. So if you accidentally dial a stargate near a black hole, your gate will be permanently useless.

5. I firmly believe that somewhere, in some dark subsystem, the stargate system maintains a kill counter

# ¿ May 31, 2020 19:02

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 19:32

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Those aren�t made by the guys who made the gates, though. It�s also kind of a dumb point. An energy weapon with no apparent need to reload/recharge and enough power to take down a helicopter? They�d be a military wet dream.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2020 20:20

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Proven even in the show by everyone adopting the alien zats as sidearms because they�re way more flexible and have better stopping power than a pistol.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2020 20:22

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Actually I expect the Charger is decent in lower-tech timeframes since weapons are poo poo and nobody can hit anything so it's better to just beat your opponent to death with kicks/punches/tree clubs. And the Charger has the tonnage to hit pretty hard.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2020 01:21

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

I think Alex is they/them.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2020 17:10

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

OtherworldlyInvader posted:

Other way around, I'm going to nominate terraforming as the shittiest piece of garbage tech in science fiction.

*terraforms a big mountain range upwind of your bases so you lose all your nutrients*

# ¿ Jun 10, 2020 20:03

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

It was the invisible hand of the free market answering a demand. Beyond any criticism.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2020 21:09

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

They routinely send MALP probes through first, don't worry.

The iris prevents the death plume from even forming, somehow? I guess? You'd think the iris would need to close right AFTER the death plume but...I dunno.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2020 19:10

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

The last one would make a lot of sense except that there are multiple instances of inbound travelers just slamming into the iris and dying. Apparently the gate allows them to transit, but can't rebuild them on the far end. They just get spit out as random particles because gently caress you, the stargate hates you.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2020 21:16

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Megillah Gorilla posted:

Star Wars space battles were remarkably consistent before the hyperspace kamikaze.

Shields protected from energy weapons, but not physical objects. Ion cannon knocked out shields which let you unleash hell. There was probably some sort of protection against ion blasts, but I don't think they were in any of the movies. Otherwise, why wouldn't every big ship have half its firepower dedicated to ion weapons?

There's even a scene in the Force Awakens (I think) when they're doing the bombing run on the star destroyer with the huge gun and you see some lasers splash on its shields while the ships fly right through.

If big ships wanted to shoot each other, they had to get in really close and we got that great shot from inside one of the capital ships as it fired broadsides at another one. I think it was in Revenge of the Sith.

To further the shields stop blasters, not objects idea - in the prequels I'm pretty sure the Gunguns used their slingshots to go right through the big shields they put up, while the blasters impacted harmlessly.

But then we got the (cinematically gorgeous) scene where the leader of the rebellion hyperdrove into another ship and all that went to hell.

TLJ is completely consistent with all of this. The hyperspace ramming isn't even hard to explain away with some :techno:

. I did a Star Wars story for a charity anthology recently and thought about dropping in an explanation but couldn't really find the wordcount. Plus it's dumb when the EU fixes stuff that doesn't need fixing!

MA-Horus posted:

That's why the Expanse is fun. It's all relativistic physics except when it comes to the big bad alien thing.

On looking at a massive Martian battleship. "One of those things can kill a planet"
the best character: "Any ship can kill a planet. Just drop anvils from orbit."

Like most of the Expanse, a quote that's superficially realistic but missing a few critical details.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2020 18:11

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

The shield turns the fast blow, admits the slow kindjal!

# ¿ Jul 3, 2020 18:27

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

You can't walk through ray shields because you would come out the far side without any rays.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2020 00:13

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Apparently in the new canon the crew complement's down to about 10,000, don't know if that includes stormtroopers or not.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2020 19:18

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

You�re almost exactly right, Starfleet actually fills its ships with hydrogen and antihydrogen to help them gracefully float through space.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2020 06:47

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Jiminy Christmas! Shoes! posted:

TNG era phasers. The ergonomics of how you hold them are terrible let alone how the gently caress anyone can aim without sights.

Given Trek technology and Trek's philosophy of "everything is insanely convenient and requires no effort" they should probably aim themselves, do some kind of sensor doohickey and just fire the beam where it needs to go.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2020 19:06

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

upgunned shitpost posted:

worf trained for hours, everyday, at the highest difficulty setting... with a gun that aims itself.

Legendary is still hard even with controller auto-aim :colbert:

# ¿ Aug 4, 2020 03:41

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Cats have incomprehensible territory maps because they time share. It�s okay if this is Peaches� spot at sunset as long as she clears out so Tubbers can sit on it and yell at midnight.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2020 20:15

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Uhh since Jet Alone is Alone it obviously has a powerful AT field, the barrier which divides our hearts. You don't think Jet Alone would be tempted by instrumentality, do you??

# ¿ Aug 15, 2020 03:34

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

I mean they weren't totally wrong about an artificial AT field countermeasure, maybe the Jets Alone could have been armed with Lance of Longinus knockoffs.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2020 17:26

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Zound Only

# ¿ Aug 15, 2020 18:44

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Excuse me they�re N2 mines which clearly stands for Non Nuclear

# ¿ Aug 16, 2020 15:44

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

galagazombie posted:

They state that they only have a few dozen in the world. It gets brought up because in the episode with the shadow angel they bring up my "use more than one bomb" strategy in desperation and plan to launch the whole worlds supply to take it out. Which of course would be bad because they're the only thing they have that can delay the Angels long enough for the pilots to learn dance choreography and they'll have used them all to kill just one. Hence why in our hypothetical non-eva scenario you'd have to resort to using good old fashioned nukes pretty quickly. And to bring this topic full circle the Jet Alone is essentially a nuke on legs, so you can still have you're giant robots in our nuke'em scenario.

"Should we let America nuke Godzilla" is a good part of the very good Shin Godzilla.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2020 19:28

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Hopefully they�ll be completely unusable. But given the USAF�s history with nuclear security the codes will probably all be set to a string of zeroes.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2020 05:21

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

I�m afraid that�s going to turn out to be extremely prophetic.

Not that I expect unlimited technological post-scarcity any time soon but it really does seem as if we might burn through our biosphere right before we make it to the discoveries that could�ve saved us.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2020 05:18

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Elmnt80 posted:

Just pretend I quoted all the posts in this thread about star trek phasers here.

In the last season of DS9 it turns out the federation had made a fancy rear end prototype weapon which was just a regular loving gun that shot tritanium bullets. Its turned into like a perfect assassin's/sniper's weapon by some rear end in a top hat on a murder streak and once he's caught they just forget that you have a magical weapon that is nearly impossible to stop, can kill people inside buildings and tons of other reality breaking bullshit, but no, have to stick to phasers that can't hit poo poo in a big firefight. Oh, also these guns and their ammo can be easily replicated along with the magic attachments as shown in this same episode.

It probably wouldn't be that useful against guys who routinely turn invisible, and given how regularly transporters and sensors stop working in Trek it might be a complete lemon in battlefield conditions. Decent for shooting Cardassians though.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2020 19:34

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

galagazombie posted:

Ironically it's the trippy psychedelic mecha that feel the most realistic. You'll never be able to come up with a physics based reason for your weapon to be human shaped. So instead the justification for why we have a robot instead of a tank is "By embodying the platonic human form the robot is powered by the collective human spirit". The answer to why we gave our robot a giant sword instead of a gun is "The ancient blade of Lusitania channels the power of the Arkenstone left behind by the Martian Ancients to cut a path to a brighter future." It may be nonsense but it makes inartistically more sense all the same.

The Evangelion explanation for 'why build a giant robot shaped like a giant human' is the best one it's literally a giant human...oid in restraints. plus your dead mom's soul probably prefers a human shaped body

# ¿ Aug 25, 2020 18:21

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

No I like it the way it is :mad:

# ¿ Aug 26, 2020 06:05

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Battletech is fine and good, and the only problem it has is that nobody is making content at the good end of the timeline (i.e. post Clan Invasion) any more.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2020 15:51

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

The Clans seem like they may make sense as somewhere between that and 40k's Space Marines; they have gimmicks and mascots and they've spent their entire history fighting each other in the name of them, and turned on anyone else they have a ridiculous amount of pride and everything to prove but have trouble breaking the habit of what's until now been mostly ceremonial warfare.

The Clans have already hit their breaking point as a society by the 3100s. The invader clans have all found ways to integrate with the Inner Sphere and become part of the feudal power structure (in some cases very successfully, in at least one case leading to their total annihilation). The Homeworld clans reached the logical endpoint of a fanatical warrior society that uses strict honor rules as a thinly veiled rationale for political violence�they genocided each other and then retreated into complete isolationism out of fear of 'taint.' They'll probably come back as some superthreat in the future but it'd almost be as satisfying to just see them dwindle away into starving nobodies.

They're pretty much exactly like the Mongols except they never conquered as much territory.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2020 17:44

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Lawman 0 posted:

Honestly it would be neat if someone showed power armor as anything but something that turns you into a superman. You know something with actual material drawbacks.

I imagine it'd be sort of terrifying actually. Either you're unaware of a lot of what's happening around you (because you are encased in armor) and yet horribly strong (and thus prone to terrible clumsiness), or you ARE aware of everything happening around you because your brain is jammed with an overwhelming number of sensors. And if it stops working you're helpless. And if it works too well it might break the fragile human thing inside.

The only part of the most recent Predator movie I liked was when the guy accidentally blows his own head off with the shoulder cannon.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2021 21:43

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

It's because people have a lot of brain devoted to emotional responses to the movement and stances of other human beings. So large technology that looks like people is appealing and evocative.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2021 01:33

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Solkanar512 posted:

But then again, if you want to see realistic space combat, watch The Expanse.

No orbital closing velocities, no radiators. I dunno.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2021 03:01

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

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.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2021 03:52

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Yes, ideally we would make a bunch of jets and then throw a G Gundam tournament every year or something.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2021 04:46

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

I actually like a couple of the effects shots in that movie :ninja:

# ¿ Feb 18, 2021 22:26

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Nebakenezzer posted:

Space bulldozer?

Definitely not that one although it is extremely funny.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2021 06:00

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Luke probably wanted to draw the TIE fighters to speeds above 300 mph, where he knew their large ailerons would turn against them and limit their normally sterling maneuverability.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2021 04:52

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

That's of course assuming they were all fighting at sea level.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2021 04:54

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

But�that�s what Jurassic Park is about too??

# ¿ Jun 22, 2022 00:42

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 19:32

General Battuta: Feb 7, 2011; This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Imagine having to live your life with the vague, dreamlike memory of squirting out a string of eggs for Tom Paris to fertilize.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2022 03:46

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