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Not to mention if the only ranged weapons that can penetrate a shield have a slight tendancy to cause a gigantic nuclear explosion...

Whereas the slow blade....

 insaniak wrote:

 Vaerros wrote:
...but things like getting in range in the first place, dealing with the problem of being caught in the open and out-flanked, not being able to maneuver with the benefits that modern armies seem to have, not being able to adequately retaliate against a foe using ranged weapons.

None of which are really a big issue for a trained Jedi with a lightsaber.

They still run the risk of being outflanked and sometimes(as I understand it) are. To use their weapon, they still effectively have to run up to the enemy and hit them with it(or throw it and lose their deflection capabilities temporarily). They still cannot use their awesome weapon to retaliate against ranged attackers(aside from, if they have particularly strong deflection fu, redirecting shots).

Many combatants have something going for them that makes their combat style feasible enough to suspend disbelief -- Jedi with their reflexes and deflection, Protoss with their speed -- but they all have the aforementioned vulnerabilities, to varying degrees.

 Compel wrote:
Not to mention if the only ranged weapons that can penetrate a shield have a slight tendancy to cause a gigantic nuclear explosion...

Whereas the slow blade....

Which universe are you talking about here?

You also miss the fact that all these melee weapons are found in media that is primarily visual, and it looks so much better having a close in melee as opposed to simply shooting your opponent. I think that the closest I can find to two such opposing styles meeting faithfully is Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Cheers

Andrew

 Vaerros wrote:


Which universe are you talking about here?

I think he is generalising the rules of Dune to all shield technologies.

Yeah, its Dune.
In Dune, they have laser weapons and shield generators. However, when a laser weapons when fired at a shield generator cause a nuclear explosion in both the weapon and the shield. However, shields protect against projectile weapons, but not slow-moving objects.
Solution? Soldiers wear mini-shield generators and charge into combat with hand weapons. When attacking with hand weapons, the strategy is to move very quickly on defence (to increase the relative speed between you and the attacker and thus activate the shield gen), and be fairly slow on attack so that you're slow enough to get through the shields.

Which was a pretty cool justification. I just don't understand (or didn't read far enough) why they didn't use automated laser-robots as tactical nukes against shielded targets...

Vaerros wrote:

 Compel wrote:
Not to mention if the only ranged weapons that can penetrate a shield have a slight tendancy to cause a gigantic nuclear explosion...

Whereas the slow blade....

Which universe are you talking about here?

It's the Dune universe, where the only weapons that can penetrate shields are lasers, but when a laser hits a shield you get an explosion ranging in the low kilotons iirc. So they use knives and hand to hand combat for nearly all ground fighting. It's actually a pretty cool idea when you think about it.

Oh and the reason they don't shoot the lasers because it causes massive explosions is their equivalent of interplanetary law. No nukes allowed!

Also, hand to hand fighting and close combat weapons are still used and taught today amongst the infantry. And hand to hand fighting as a staple of infantry fighting isn't exactly that far away historically either. In WW1 many infantry men used their rifles as clubs or bayonet delviery systems, and if Erich Maria Remarque is to be believed the Germans generally went over with nothing but a trench trowel and a bag full of Grenades. Also, hand to hand combat is also still the primary way of quietly eliminating enemy sentries if movies/books/videogames are to be believed.

AndrewC wrote:You also miss the fact that all these melee weapons are found in media that is primarily visual, and it looks so much better having a close in melee as opposed to simply shooting your opponent. I think that the closest I can find to two such opposing styles meeting faithfully is Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Cheers

Andrew

True, though the Raiders of the Lost Ark scene you're talking about was actually not intended. It was just something that Harrison Ford did that the stunt guy went along with and ended up being in the movie.

Trasvi wrote:
Yeah, its Dune.
In Dune, they have laser weapons and shield generators. However, when a laser weapons when fired at a shield generator cause a nuclear explosion in both the weapon and the shield. However, shields protect against projectile weapons, but not slow-moving objects.
Solution? Soldiers wear mini-shield generators and charge into combat with hand weapons. When attacking with hand weapons, the strategy is to move very quickly on defence (to increase the relative speed between you and the attacker and thus activate the shield gen), and be fairly slow on attack so that you're slow enough to get through the shields.

Which was a pretty cool justification. I just don't understand (or didn't read far enough) why they didn't use automated laser-robots as tactical nukes against shielded targets...

To be a major House in the Landsraad requires you to have a stockpile of nukes. The Great Convention, however, prohibits you from using any atomic devices, or else all the other Houses, the Guild and the Imperium are under obligation to turn your world into glass.

Trasvi wrote:
Yeah, its Dune.
In Dune, they have laser weapons and shield generators. However, when a laser weapons when fired at a shield generator cause a nuclear explosion in both the weapon and the shield. However, shields protect against projectile weapons, but not slow-moving objects.
Solution? Soldiers wear mini-shield generators and charge into combat with hand weapons. When attacking with hand weapons, the strategy is to move very quickly on defence (to increase the relative speed between you and the attacker and thus activate the shield gen), and be fairly slow on attack so that you're slow enough to get through the shields.

Which was a pretty cool justification. I just don't understand (or didn't read far enough) why they didn't use automated laser-robots as tactical nukes against shielded targets...

In the Dune universe it's illegal to have non human guided ai. I forget exactly what the war was called but apparently it was long and bloody and AI are now a sure way to earn yourself a Galaxy wide perma ban.

 Ratbarf wrote:


In the Dune universe it's illegal to have non human guided ai. I forget exactly what the war was called but apparently it was long and bloody and AI are now a sure way to earn yourself a Galaxy wide perma ban.

Butlerian Jihad.

 Ratbarf wrote:


Also, hand to hand fighting and close combat weapons are still used and taught today amongst the infantry. And hand to hand fighting as a staple of infantry fighting isn't exactly that far away historically either. In WW1 many infantry men used their rifles as clubs or bayonet delviery systems, and if Erich Maria Remarque is to be believed the Germans generally went over with nothing but a trench trowel and a bag full of Grenades. Also, hand to hand combat is also still the primary way of quietly eliminating enemy sentries if movies/books/videogames are to be believed.
.

I'm not talking about soldiers receiving basic training in hand-to-hand and the occasional use of such techniques to subdue enemies, but a much more specialized approach than that. And no, that kind of approach hasn't been taken in warfare for a very long time.

Selym wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

 ProtoClone wrote:
Germs, and how little they play a part in encountering alien species.

Using "War of the Worlds" as an good example of poorly planned alien enviroment preperation. In most other sci-fi settings, you never see something like this happening. It's like the go waltzing through a biological fire fight and manage to not get hit by anything.

That was one thing I priased Enterprise for was their emphasis on making sure no one brought anything back with them when they would go to alien worlds.

Actually, seeing as how the inside of living creatures forms one of the most hostile environments on earth, with bacteria and virii only able to inhabit/attack species they've specifically adapted to, it's so unlikely as to be impossible for alien diseases to effect humans, and vice-versa.


The worst trends in sci-fi are, first off: using alien species as a hamfisted metaphor for racism: racism isn't wrong because it's mean or intolerant, it's wrong because it's factually incorrect and grossly detached from reality; when you introduce beings that genuinely are of a fundamentally different nature, pretending they shouldn't be treated any different because "TOLERANCE!" is outright gibbering lunacy.

The second is treating humans as "weak but clever", or levelheaded to a fault; we're physically large and powerful creatures possessed of incredible endurance and general resilience, ridiculous adaptability, an instinctive grasp of basic tactics, and a propensity for extreme violence in the face of danger.

Which is why I like 40k, whenever humans are threatened, we go crazy and beat the living hell out of whatever alien provoked us (Major example being the great crusade, and every toughened guardsman ever).

I know, right? 40k's the only setting that I know of that captures it quite so well. Most settings just go with the star wars or star trek style rubbish, where aliens are people too and humans are just average, mild-mannered "ideal americans" (that's the best way I can phrase it, and it's not entirely accurate to what I'm meaning, but I'm sure a lot of you will get it; just that sort of inoffensive Hollywood conception of how people act).

 Vaerros wrote:

 Ratbarf wrote:


Also, hand to hand fighting and close combat weapons are still used and taught today amongst the infantry. And hand to hand fighting as a staple of infantry fighting isn't exactly that far away historically either. In WW1 many infantry men used their rifles as clubs or bayonet delviery systems, and if Erich Maria Remarque is to be believed the Germans generally went over with nothing but a trench trowel and a bag full of Grenades. Also, hand to hand combat is also still the primary way of quietly eliminating enemy sentries if movies/books/videogames are to be believed.
.

I'm not talking about soldiers receiving basic training in hand-to-hand and the occasional use of such techniques to subdue enemies, but a much more specialized approach than that. And no, that kind of approach hasn't been taken in warfare for a very long time.

100 years in western warfare, a lot less in some parts of the world.

I don't mind melee weapons in a sci-fi setting.

If FPS games taught me anything, its that melee enemies are really fething annoying. Knives don't reload for one thing, and they don't need ammo.

If you are trapped on a enemy world and finding yourself low on bullets, its nice to have a back up.

Regarding the space-fighters thing, I've been thinking about some kind of Dune-eque way of justifying fighters in space:

1) Capital ships are equipped with shields against lasers.
2) Engagement between capital ships begins at ranges of several dozen light-seconds, so shooting is incredibly ineffective until range closes. Ship speeds are measured in fractions of light-speed, with 0.05c being a typical velocity.
3) FTL travel exists, in my universe in the form of semi-teleportation, completely swapping the particles existing at the two locations. Ships can project a field for a decent-sized radius which stops this FTL travel (as a defence mechanism) but this also stops themselves from using FTL.
4) Ships are incredibly vulnerable to kinetic weapons. A speck of dust colliding with a craft at a relative speed of 0.5c causes huge damage, let alone the 1kg railgun shots used by capital ships. Ships have automated point defences to defend themselves against projectiles and space debris, but they obviously need to locate the object and determine a firing solution to destroy them.

Combining these, fighters become a decent mechanism for combating enemy capital ships. Fighters deploy from their capital ship and jump as close to the enemy as possible, accelerating to speeds around 0.1c. An automated system keeps the ship 'jumping' ever so slightly every few microseconds, changing the location and trajectory by mere arcseconds to prevent the point defences from locking on. They aim to get close enough to use their kinetic weapons on vulnerable parts of the ships - comms arrays, radiators, engines.. The only effective defence against fighters is fighters of your own.

Fighters can be controlled via on-board AI or pilots, but the distances involved are too far for commands via remote control.

Sound plausible?


Also, my biggest annoyance in sci-fi (or most tv/film) is how they portray computer programming. I remember a Stargate episode where, on their first encounter with a completely new alien technology, they not only manage to hack into it but reprogram it to do something completely different, within the space of about 5 minutes. I'm a fairly skilled programmer but I definitely couldn't analyse even a new earth-originated language, discern its syntax and grammar, and write anything meaningful in less than an hour. Throw in decent security and encapsulation and sandboxing and it shouldn't be possible to do any of this (see outrage at security flaws in Java or Ruby in recent news...)

Also, entire races with the same personality/traits (Klingons = warriors)

The problem is that you have fields which prevent FTL jumping, yet your fighters rely on this FTL micro jump technique to avoid the point defence systems of the capital ships in order to get close enough to use their kinetic weapons.

In regards to the Klingons - you see a lot of other personality traits within the race, it is just their culture is highly militaristic. It also doesn't help that is pretty much the only side of their culture we tend to see.

 SilverMK2 wrote:
The problem is that you have fields which prevent FTL jumping, yet your fighters rely on this FTL micro jump technique to avoid the point defence systems of the capital ships in order to get close enough to use their kinetic weapons.

In regards to the Klingons - you see a lot of other personality traits within the race, it is just their culture is highly militaristic. It also doesn't help that is pretty much the only side of their culture we tend to see.

Didn't the writers start to worry (during the movie era?) that the Klingons were being routinely portrayed as galactic bogey-men, and this was deemed unsuitable for Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek?

I thought the Borg were the Galactic bogey men? But you really want to see a one trick race? The Hrojan from Voyager. All they do is hunt, all the time, even though it's making them extinct. It's all kinds of dumb really.

 Ratbarf wrote:
I thought the Borg were the Galactic bogey men? But you really want to see a one trick race? The Hrojan from Voyager. All they do is hunt, all the time, even though it's making them extinct. It's all kinds of dumb really.

Yes, but bogey-men comprised mostly of victims deprived of their own choices and personalities, it's far less morally dubious than having an entire race of villainous types!
Did they ever explore the deep origins of the Borg? I'd always assumed that it was a quest for perfection/immortality that went badly, badly wrong and snowballed out of control?

Isn't the queen the original borg? And honestly, the scene where they introduce her in Voyager is probably one of the coolest scenes in star trek.

This is the closest I can find to a version of it. It's the first 45 seconds or so. Though the voice actor cuts in and kind of ruins the scenes gravitas.

Alfndrate wrote:

 Ratbarf wrote:
Rule of Two? I rather liked both of the Bane books personally.

The concept that there can only be 1 master and 1 apprentice at any one time in the universe...


>_> If I remember correctly.

Yeap, when the apprentice thinks they are powerful enough they challenge the master and the victor finds a new apprentice, that way (In Bane's mind) only the truly worthy inherit the power of the dark side masters

Ratbarf wrote:

 Alfndrate wrote:

 Ratbarf wrote:
Rule of Two? I rather liked both of the Bane books personally.

The concept that there can only be 1 master and 1 apprentice at any one time in the universe...


>_> If I remember correctly.

There are two Darth Bane books, one of which is called Rule of Two. I was asking if he didn't like either books, just the one, or the whole concept. Rule of Two does make a certain amount of sense as has been stated. It also allowed the Sith to go underground, as the Jedi thought them extinct.

Three now, Dynasty of evil finished out the trilogy

 Ratbarf wrote:

 Vaerros wrote:

 Ratbarf wrote:


Also, hand to hand fighting and close combat weapons are still used and taught today amongst the infantry. And hand to hand fighting as a staple of infantry fighting isn't exactly that far away historically either. In WW1 many infantry men used their rifles as clubs or bayonet delviery systems, and if Erich Maria Remarque is to be believed the Germans generally went over with nothing but a trench trowel and a bag full of Grenades. Also, hand to hand combat is also still the primary way of quietly eliminating enemy sentries if movies/books/videogames are to be believed.
.

I'm not talking about soldiers receiving basic training in hand-to-hand and the occasional use of such techniques to subdue enemies, but a much more specialized approach than that. And no, that kind of approach hasn't been taken in warfare for a very long time.

100 years in western warfare, a lot less in some parts of the world.

100 years...in western warfare, what? We're talking about the complete package here -- melee weapons as primary weapons and armor systems designed to protect against them. It's been centuries since that kind of fighting has been truly common.

Klingons tend to be portrayed fairer in Deep Space 9, if I remember right.

Although, everything does have that warrior slant on it.

For example, Klingon Farmers are Honourable Warriors fighting glorious battles against the harsh elements of their homeworld in order to feed our more Honourable Warriors.