Best and worst Mechanical Designs in science fiction

[avatarxprime]

I do recall references in some novels about Star Wars starfighter canopies "polarizing" (becoming opaque) in specific areas to protect a pilot's eyes from sources of bright light.

Also, the idea of having a pilot sit in a 360 degree sphere of screens is silly when you can just project an image of the same input into a helmet's eyepieces, while tracking the helmet's motion.
The TIE fighter pilots looking around all over the place supports this possibility.

Especially since we can do that today with our current tech (i.e. F35 pilots), so it would be silly to say it's "too advanced" to make in the future.

One interesting thing I read about that is that most fighter pilot tend to occasionally glance at the parts of the cockpit with the least amount of displays on it to reduce information overload induced headaches, and obviously beaming the HUD straight into their eyes makes that kinda hard. Of course they could always close their eyes, but then they wouldn't be able to see blinking warning lights and other stuff that they presumably are aware off trough their peripheral vision.

Along those lines best would then go to something like the Prowler pilot set-up in Farscape. Multi-purpose oculars projects all the flight data necessary onto the pilots eyes and they can function outside the Prowler as a combination visual enhancer/sensor.

[[R_H]]

One of the worst designs that comes immediately to mind is the Draka's hovercraft tanks, mentioned in Stone Dogs (during the Drakan invasion of India).

[Connor MacLeod]

I think the Star Destroyer - although undoubtedly iconic - is a pretty poor design. Its heaviest weapons can only be brought to bear on targets on the ship's sides. Granted, they're obviously meant for orbital bombardments but even so its pretty difficult to understand the rationale for their placement. Why not have a staggered series of heavy gun turrets down the front slope of the hull, just like a traditional battleship?

This only matters if the ranges get very close ("point blank range" as it were) and in such cases you wouldn't want to be using the heavy turrets because they're big and slow moving. Since they're clearly designed for long range use, the coverage/positioning isn't as crucial an issue, since an enemy that is, say, hundreds of km away has to cover far more distance simply to get "under" you (and it requires far less motion of your own ship, or even your guns, to track them than it would say if the guy was a few km away.) Anyone who gets close up is going to be engaged by the lighter, more numerous secondary guns.

And while technically the turrets might still benefit from better placement (just becuase its not a huge drawback doesn't mean its neccesarily the best placement) that does make assumptions that there are no other limiting factors (structural ones, for example. IIRC the heavy guns are placed ideally because of the "center of mass" in the warship, but they're also closest to the reactors/engines as well.)

Putting guns on the underside would have the disadvantage of taking away from internal volume (you have to install all the stuff to turn and ifre the turrets, after all, and then there's the recoil bracing and such..) and it may interfere with the use of hangars.

Except they can fire their full firepower out of a single turret, so it's less of an issue. Placing them evenly down the spine would be better, but it's handwavable with powerplant proximity/hangar demands/etc.

IIRC the quote you refer to its from the ROTS ICS and its not out of a single turret, its out of multiple guns. I don't know if it meant "all power through" only a broadside, or all guns collectively I just recall that its mentioned that all "true warships" can route all its power thorugh its heavy guns. My guess would be "all guns" since even half the broadside is going to possess substantial recoil, necessitating some means of counteracting it (unless you want to push the ship thousands of gees in the opposite direction.) That means either having the engines counter, or the other guns firing too.