Bad design in Star Wars

[Darwin]

Was pointed at this today:

John Scalzi's Guide to the Most Epic FAILs in Star Wars Design

Now I'll be the first to admit that there's some bad design in Star Wars, but these aren't it.

I didn't want to make an AMCTV account, so I'll go off here.

R2: designed to interact almost exclusively with machines. Regular R2 droids, ones that have been erased in the last 50 years, are boring little gnomes who nobody would want to talk to anyway.

C3P0: designed to be awkward so as to be as completely non-threatening as possible while still being able to operate in a human-designed environment. Gets a pass on the whole 'offensive stereotype' bit though.

lightsabers: blades tend to stick a bit, you hardly ever see a blade sliding on another blade without catching and sparking. And what would you make a handguard out of?

blasters: power makes up for everything, They're not as loud as chemical slugthrowers and they're not THAT slow. Admittedly the tracer effect can be a serious liability.

landspeeders: no seatbelts because of active restraint systems. Did this guy not pay any attention to the visual guides?

stormtrooper uniforms: meant to be seen, and have to be fitted carefully to the user for the (reportedly impressive) optics to work right. It also provides some protection against blasters, and substantial protection against explosions and fragmentation. The fitting issue is an advantage when you have the best armor on the block which folks would be happy to steal, except they can't get it to work right. Also, by this guy's logic, modern soldier body armor fails against heavy rifles so it must be useless. 9.9

death star: was a tiny vulnerability taken out by a one-in-a-billion shot. Not much of a vulnerability, really.

Sarlaac: I guess pitcherplants and venus flytraps are stupid too.

Space worm: okay, you got one there.

Midichlorians: Alright, two.

[Xess]

And when you rebuild it, your solution to this problem is four paths into the central core so large that you can literally fly a spaceship through them? Brilliant.

Did he not realize that the Second Death Star was only 60% completed?

[Isolder74]

On the space slug, it normally lives off of Mynocks. A spaceship is just a nice treat for it.

Edit, I guess he'd think an Ant Lion is stupid too. It live is a pit that ants fall into and it then eats them.

[Samuel]

Sarlaac: I guess pitcherplants and venus flytraps are stupid too.

They generally don't live in deserts... and they have leaves.

[Darwin]

Sarlaac: I guess pitcherplants and venus flytraps are stupid too.

They generally don't live in deserts... and they have leaves.

I guess my point there is he assumes it's a barren, lifeless desert, when every shot of Tatooine countryside shows some Henson puppet critter somewhere. Plenty of things to fall in.

[Darwin]

of course he doesn't touch on much of the real bad design in Star Wars:

Suboptimal arrangement of stardestroyer heavy guns, never mind exposed bridgeworks

Lack of railings over bottomless holes

etc

[nightmare]

R2-D2

He can play back Leia's voice just fine, man. He's just too snooty to grunt meatbag noises. Also, he's got legs.

C-3PO

He's supposed to do two things. Talk and walk. Both of which he does just fine.

Lightsabers

The whole beam is a hand guard. No sliding.

Blasters

Aside from visibility, you've got nothing but poor attention span. Ah, and there's blasters with invisible bolts and sound suppression.

Landspeeders and other flying vehicles

Correct. As in, they have force fields. You weren't.

Stormtrooper Uniforms

Funny that Han didn't complain about visibility... I guess he wasn't too short, eh? Plus not paying attention to the camouflage armor in the PT.

Death Star

An exhaust port you first have to know about, and then be able to hit. Also dude, even a cursory glance at the DSII should tell you it wasn't done yet. What's the complaint about the shaft? It had railings, you know.

Sarlaac

Remember that huge skeleton in the desert? No? Explains much.

That Asteroid Worm Thing

What the devil makes you think it feeds on passing by starships?

Midi-Chlorians

Most misunderstood concept since Super Star Destroyers.

Suboptimal arrangement of stardestroyer heavy guns

When you can focus your reactor power into any single gun, the reason for many weapons is scattered fire.

exposed bridgeworks

Irrelevant, blowing the bridge has little impact on the ship's functions. The primary reactor core is buried deep in the ship and has the most heavy armoring. That's what counts. Plus there's auxiliary bridges and ISD conning towers are large enough to count as capital starships.

Lack of railings over bottomless holes

Where? I can only recall when Luke and Leia running into an open door where the walkway was drawn back - quite possibly intended to cut them off. Obi-Wan was mucking around with the tractor beam controls where he wasn't supposed to be, maintenance there might be done by flying droids, if required.


Now for my own list.

1) Mechs, any and all. Sure, they're cool and SW tech means you can throw around legs like nobody's business with advanced gyroscopic control and the weapons don't really need a more stable platform, but at the end of the day, legs are still bad. Except maybe on MT-AT walkers.

2) Only large-scale defences on the Death Star. Of course, that's pretty irrelevant when you have thousands and thousands of TIE Fighters to deal with small scale threats, but that's not going to help you if you're too arrogant to use them in the first place. Suppose it had that "tighter defence" Dodonna was talking about though? What would Luke have done then? Cried over Leia being blown to bits and then flown off with Han on new adventures, maybe taking up a smuggling career?

3) B-1 battledroids. Sure, they're meant to be cheap, repairable blaster fodder. They still suck.

4) Seismic tank from the CW cartoon. Seriously, have you seen that thing?

5) MTTs are rather poor too. Slow as molasses and large targets, compare that to the rapid troop delivery of Republic troops and vehicles on Geonosis. The CIS is guilty of many poor designs.

I'm sure I could find more, but I'm tired.

[Kristoff]

lightsabers: [...] And what would you make a handguard out of?

Cortosis or phrik.

[Dooey Jo]

Also, I'm still waiting to hear the rationale for making a protocol droid a shrieking coward, aside from George Lucas rummaging through a box of offensive stereotypes (which he'd later return to while building Jar-Jar Binks) and picking out the "mincing gay man" module.

Larf!

You say: Lightsabers can slice through anything but another lightsaber, so what are you going to make a hand guard out of? I say: Dude, if you have the technology to make a lightsaber, you have the technology to make a light hand guard.

I say: Duuuuuuude, totally! But you know what would be totally rad? Light-nunchucks! Duuuuude!

They're incredibly loud, especially for firing what are essentially light beams.

They don't look like any light beams I've ever seen, but if you say so. Dude.

And maybe if you're flying your hoity-toity vehicle on Coruscant, you have, like, a force field that keeps you flying out of your seat. But Luke's X-34 speeder on Tatooine? The Yugo of speeders, man. One hard stop, and out you go.

Yeah man, it's some piece of shit technology that can only defy the force of gravity somehow. No way it could have force field seat belts that defy inertial forces.

A monstrous yet immobile creature who lives in an exposed pit in the middle of a lifeless desert, waiting for large animals to apparently feel suicidal and trek out to throw themselves in? Yeah, not so much.

I hear you probably don't need to expend very much energy if you're a monstrous immobile creature. The only bad part about it is that its mouth should get covered pretty quickly in a shifting sand desert.

So, large space worm lives in asteroid, disguises itself as a cave and waits for unwary spaceships to fly by so it can eat them?

Why the fuck would it eat space ships? It might as well eat asteroids then.

Oh, man, don't get me started. Except to say this: If in fact a high concentration of midi-chlorians is the difference between being a common schmoe and being a dude who can Force Choke his enemies, the black market in midi-chlorian injections must be amazing.

Ya! That makes sense! What other things that live inside your cells can you casually inject? I bet I will get bear powers if I inject bear chromosomes!

[CaptHawkeye]

He's an idiot, who seems to be drawing 90% of his criticisms from the video games. I mean he honestly thinks you can dodge blaster bolts just because they're really bright. By that logic human beings should be able to dodge bullets because they have tracers.

[Havok]

"R2-D2
Sure, he's cute, but the flaws in his design are obvious the first time he approaches anything but the shallowest of stairs. Also: He has jets, a periscope, a taser and oil canisters to make enforcer droids fall about in slapsticky fashion -- and no voice synthesizer. Imagine that design conversation: "Yes, we can afford slapstick oil and tasers, but we'll never get a 30-cent voice chip past accounting. That's just madness.""

It is neat how you contradict yourself immediately there. Also, I don't seem to remember anyone having a problem understanding R2, or any astromech droid for that matter.

"C-3PO
Can't fully extend his arms; has a bunch of exposed wiring in his abs; walks and runs as if he has the droid equivalent of arthritis. And you say, well, he was put together by an eight-year-old. Yes, but a trip to the nearest Radio Shack would fix that. Also, I'm still waiting to hear the rationale for making a protocol droid a shrieking coward, aside from George Lucas rummaging through a box of offensive stereotypes (which he'd later return to while building Jar-Jar Binks) and picking out the "mincing gay man" module."

Oh the GL is a racist argument. It is funny that I actually had to have the sterotypes in question actually pointed out to even notice them. Guess that is some insight into how your mind works. And since you haven't actually watched the movies, which is obvious, all the protocol droids we see of 3PO's make move in the same manner, including one that works as a bounty hunter. So it clearly is a purposeful design and not the doings of an 8 year old.

"Lightsabers
Yes, I know, I want one too. But I tell you what: I want one with a hand guard. Otherwise every lightsaber battle would consist of sabers clashing and then their owners sliding as quickly as possible down the shaft to lop off their opponent's fingers. You say: Lightsabers can slice through anything but another lightsaber, so what are you going to make a hand guard out of? I say: Dude, if you have the technology to make a lightsaber, you have the technology to make a light hand guard"

Wow, in a blog rant about tech design FAIL, you suggest a hand guard made... out of a lightsaber blade... something which can cut through pretty much anything. Good thing Jedi never move their hands or fingers on the hilt or adjust the hilt position. Oh wait.

"Blasters
A tactical nightmare: They're incredibly loud, especially for firing what are essentially light beams. The fire ordnance is so slow it can be dodged, and it comes out as a streak of light that reveals your position to your enemies. Let's not even go near the idea of light beams being slow enough to dodge; that's just something you have let go of, or risk insanity."

Oh man, lets not go near that idea. If they were beams of light, they would move too fast for you to see. So guess they aren't beams of light. Guess they are something that moves slow enough to actually see. I also hear that militaries that use weapons that make loud bangs fail tactically and never accomplish missions. Oops.

"Landspeeders and other flying vehicles
Here's the thing: In the Star Wars universe, there are no seatbelts. And maybe if you're flying your hoity-toity vehicle on Coruscant, you have, like, a force field that keeps you flying out of your seat. But Luke's X-34 speeder on Tatooine? The Yugo of speeders, man. One hard stop, and out you go."

Seriously, your powers of observation are ridiculously bad. That or you are akin to a Trek fan that needs a technobabble explanation for everything even though you can see the effects of something clear as day. The people in Star Wars routinely travel, turn and stop at speeds that should turn them into goo. Since that doesn't happen, there must be something in effect that prevents that from happening. Does every single piece of technology in a setting like Star Wars need to be spelled out for you and given a name. Apparently, it does.

"Stormtrooper Uniforms
They stand out like a sore thumb in every environment but snow, the helmets restrict view ("I can't see a thing in this helmet!" -- Luke Skywalker), and the armor is penetrable by single shots from blasters. Add it all up and you have to wonder why stormtroopers don't just walk around naked, save for blinders and flip-flops."

Hey, I hear that modern armor on our soldiers stops bullets perfectly, every time. Oh wait. I also hear that if you randomly grab a helmet that isn't sized to your head, it may not fit correctly? IMPOSSIBLE! It must just not work properly! Looks like the only thing adding up is that you are an idiot.

"Death Star
An unshielded exhaust port leading directly to the central reactor? Really? And when you rebuild it, your solution to this problem is four paths into the central core so large that you can literally fly a spaceship through them? Brilliant. Note to the Emperor: Someone on your Death Star design staff is in the pay of Rebel forces. Oh, right, you can't get the memo because someone threw you down a huge exposed shaft in your Death Star throne room."

On top of not watching, I guess you had the sound down as well. "The shaft is RAY SHIELDED, so you will have to use proton torpedoes." I mean, like only a million to one shot guided by some miraculous force would get into that shaft... Oh... wait. I don't think I need to say anything about the fact that the second Death Star wasn't competed and it's inner superstructure was exposed. I mean, if you watched the... movie... you... Oh... wait. P.S. I hear that no one has ever been forcibly thrown over a railing before. Say it with me class... Oh.. wait.

"Bad design in Star Wars is not just limited to stuff; evolution here seems wacky, too. Three choice bits:"

Oh boy... do I want to even venture forward?

"Sarlaac
A monstrous yet immobile creature who lives in an exposed pit in the middle of a lifeless desert, waiting for large animals to apparently feel suicidal and trek out to throw themselves in? Yeah, not so much. Not every Sarlaac can count on an intergalactic mob boss to feed it tidbits."

Man, maybe you are just stupid. Yes, clearly Tattooine is lifeless. I mean, it's not like it supports tribes of Tusken Raiders, wandering banthas, womp rats, humans, and countless other aliens. Not to mention the Sarlacc itself and dinosuar sized creatures that you are shown the skeleton of if you watched... Oops I forgot. You really do need to have the obvious spelled out for you don't you.

"That Asteroid Worm Thing in Empire Strikes Back
So, large space worm lives in asteroid, disguises itself as a cave and waits for unwary spaceships to fly by so it can eat them? Makes the Sarlaac look like a marvel of natural selection, it does."

The fact that the Falcon flies into the space slug on accident, in a desperate attempt to not be captured or killed by the Empire automatically leads you to the conclusion that the space slugs source of food is space ships and its means of luring them in is disguising itself as a cave? Holy hell. Do you need help tying your shoe laces?

"Midi-Chlorians
Oh, man, don't get me started. Except to say this: If in fact a high concentration of midi-chlorians is the difference between being a common schmoe and being a dude who can Force Choke his enemies, the black market in midi-chlorian injections must be amazing."

It must be... unless... it doesn't work. I mean, if it were that easy, why not just clone an army of Jedi. Why spend what must be an unimaginable amount of money and resources blood screening the countless children born in the civilized part of the galaxy, when you could just inject some Force on into whoever you wanted? In the thousands of years of history in the Star Wars galaxy, surely someone must have thought of that right? Nah, it must have just taken a sharp mind like yours to come up with that idea.
We won't even touch on the fact that midichlorians are in your cells and not just your blood stream like you moronically assume from hearsay, since again, you clearly haven't actually seen any of the Star Wars movies.

It makes me sad that people like you are allowed to interact with the masses.

How'd I do?

[CaptHawkeye]

I'd love to know why it's so "in" for current nerds to trash Star Wars. They really believe Star Wars needs more grimdark angst, and characters all with tragic, emotional backgrounds. Plus detailed, self-fullfilling tech manual descriptions on every little bit of technology, backed up by a canon RPG sourcebook to be released at the same time of the movie!

[bz249]

of course he doesn't touch on much of the real bad design in Star Wars:

Suboptimal arrangement of stardestroyer heavy guns, never mind exposed bridgeworks

Lack of railings over bottomless holes

etc

If you think about star destroyers as destroyers they have almost optimal gun arrangement. They are designed to pursuit the enemy thus all forward is right way to do the job. They should dictate the engagement so the goal is the capability to point every gun into one direction. The only issue is that they could have centerline turrets.

[Themightytom]

woah wtf? Everyone here defending the lack of seatbelts in the landspeeders has probably thrown a few criticisms at Star trek where they do the same thing, I thought the concensus was why have a complicated technobabble solution that can fail, when there's a more straightforward physical solution?

R2 D2 is slightly flawed because even in Luke's X wing he has to look down at a screen to see his damae report. That being said I wrote a fanfic once that featured an R1 which COULD speak, the whole line was discontinued because they were constantly using inventing offensive profanity.

Threepio... come ON its arguable that he even NEED legs, he DEFINITELY could walk a little smoother. if youw ant him to be innofensive, PROGRAM him tow alk like an F tard. His failure to straight up RUN past Lando and Leia vault over them and have the falcon powered up, ready to go, and tea on demosntrates he has limited mobility by design rather than programming.
Regarding his sissy demeanor, wow Havok I didn't know you were Stephen Colbert and you don't see colors.

I'm not seeing the flaw in the second death star as it was not finished yet, and the one on the first was sort of a tiiiny DEM on a moon sized space ship.

Handrails are definitely a problem in star wars, but almost exclusively on Death Stars. maybe they could avhe used a few more on Bespin but honestly, who would plan for luke to be messing around ovver there anyway.

Lightsaber guard... HOW is that a stupid idea? If materials exist with which it is possible anyway... and to do that we'd need to check in the EU which as scalzi previously stated exists msotly to ehance design weaknesses.

Blasters:Well there are EU versions that correct the loudness and the tracers.

[Dooey Jo]

woah wtf? Everyone here defending the lack of seatbelts in the landspeeders has probably thrown a few criticisms at Star trek where they do the same thing, I thought the concensus was why have a complicated technobabble solution that can fail, when there's a more straightforward physical solution?

Their anti-gravity technology is supposed to be completely passive; it's not a huge stretch that their inertial compensators are of similar technology, only hooked up to an accelerometer. If seatbelts actually were better, they'd probably, you know, use them. Unlike Star Trek, where their "safety measures" fail all the time, but are never changed.

R2 D2 is slightly flawed because even in Luke's X wing he has to look down at a screen to see his damae report.

Is R2 supposed to have a space microphone up there? Maybe that idea has a fatal flaw. Sending digital data into the ship's computer is a lot faster and better than sending audio to the pilot anyway. If it really mattered they could install a screen reader.

Lightsaber guard... HOW is that a stupid idea? If materials exist with which it is possible anyway...

He said a "light hand guard", ie. a lightsabre blade as a hand guard. That's pretty fucking stupid. Any useful lightsabre hand guard would probably be more like a tsuba on a Japanese sword; mostly to prevent the wielder's hands from grabbing the blade.

[Stofsk]

woah wtf? Everyone here defending the lack of seatbelts in the landspeeders has probably thrown a few criticisms at Star trek where they do the same thing, I thought the concensus was why have a complicated technobabble solution that can fail, when there's a more straightforward physical solution?

Their anti-gravity technology is supposed to be completely passive; it's not a huge stretch that their inertial compensators are of similar technology, only hooked up to an accelerometer. If seatbelts actually were better, they'd probably, you know, use them. Unlike Star Trek, where their "safety measures" fail all the time, but are never changed.

I find I have to agree with Themightytom about this. Lack of seatbelts is stupid, and one of those things they do have IIRC in the snowspeeders.

R2 D2 is slightly flawed because even in Luke's X wing he has to look down at a screen to see his damae report.

Is R2 supposed to have a space microphone up there? Maybe that idea has a fatal flaw. Sending digital data into the ship's computer is a lot faster and better than sending audio to the pilot anyway. If it really mattered they could install a screen reader.

I think the point that was made is if these walking tin boxes can make hyperspace computations, why don't they have a voder that lets them communicate in Basic? Surely it can't be that much of drain on processor power?

Lightsaber guard... HOW is that a stupid idea? If materials exist with which it is possible anyway...

He said a "light hand guard", ie. a lightsabre blade as a hand guard. That's pretty fucking stupid. Any useful lightsabre hand guard would probably be more like a tsuba on a Japanese sword; mostly to prevent the wielder's hands from grabbing the blade.

I agree with you, it's pretty stupid, but I've heard this criticism before. It depends on how lightsabres actually work, mind you, and I've always felt they're a kind of exotic application of forcefield technology that separates matter but if it comes in contact with other forcefields, it will be repelled. That's why Qui-gon and Obi-wan were at a standoff with the Droidekas, why Maul had to wait for the forcefields to cycle in the reactor room on Naboo to continue the duel with Qui-gon, and may well explain why you can't do the 'slide down the blade' trick people like the guy from the blog thinks you should be able to do.

[Captain Seafort]

may well explain why you can't do the 'slide down the blade' trick people like the guy from the blog thinks you should be able to do.

Actually, you can do the 'slide down the blade' trick - Anakin did it with his and Dooku's sabres when he killed Dooku, and I think he did something very similar a minute or so earlier to disarm him. It may be that it's simply something quite tricky to pull off, hence why we don't see it very often.

[Lord Revan]

funny thing about C-3PO ift he interviews are to belived Lucas didn't come up with his manerisms but they actor playing him did.

[Elfdart]

funny thing about C-3PO ift he interviews are to belived Lucas didn't come up with his manerisms but they actor playing him did.

Correct. Lucas was going to have Richard Dreyfuss do the voice as a kind of used car salesman. Then he asked Mel Blanc to do it, but Blanc said he thought Anthony Daniels' prissy English butler act was perfect.

[Academia Nut]

From what has been gathered from the actor interviews, the same thing was true of Jar Jar where the black actor was allowed to play the actor the way he wanted and then everyone leapt upon the Gungans for being black stereotypes. Of course, the other Gungans threw Jar Jar out for being annoying and have a advanced, technological civilization that despite not being as advanced as mainstream galactic society still managed to hold their own for a time against the droid army. Obviously racist of George Lucas.

So yeah, it seems that people will leap upon any character without human features for having exagerated features, expressions, or mannerisms as being some sort of stereotype even if its not the actor or director's intention. In fact, I believe Mr. Daniels even said that he intentionally overacted because C3P0's face doesn't move thus he has to project extra emotion.

[Elfdart]

Originally Jennifer Tilly was going to do Jar Jar's voice.

[nightmare]

may well explain why you can't do the 'slide down the blade' trick people like the guy from the blog thinks you should be able to do.

Actually, you can do the 'slide down the blade' trick - Anakin did it with his and Dooku's sabres when he killed Dooku, and I think he did something very similar a minute or so earlier to disarm him. It may be that it's simply something quite tricky to pull off, hence why we don't see it very often.

Watching the scene, I can't quite agree with you. Anakin barely touches Dooku's saber once while getting behind the Count's guard. He's also not doing much of a scissors trick when decapitating Dooku, he's actually pulling the two lightsabers apart. Any sliding must be minimal at best.

[Elfdart]

How'd I do?

In the words of Mercier, King of Talkback:


He has been...


...SCHOOLED!

[FSTargetDrone]

Seatbelts... weren't Jango and Bobo Fett strapped in tightly in the cockpit of Slave I? Didn't Anakin belt in once he left Theed Palace in the N-1 which was on autopilot?

As far as Luke's landspeeder, even if it didn't have a force restraint system built into the seats, is it so surprising that it has no belts? It's not like people have ever driven around in cars without wearing seat belts. Luke's ride is not exactly in the best of repair and I can just see Luke ignoring the belts even if it had any. It could have once had seat belts which were long ago discarded before or after Luke got his hands on it.

The various speeder bikes, military and civilian, are wickedly fast and they have no physical restraints at all (just like motorcycles).

[Count Chocula]

He forgot Anakin's ride, Twilight, from the Clone Wars animated series. It looks like a B-Wing met a sugar scoop and Twilight's the retarded offspring:


Seriously, how goofy is this ship for hot-shot Jedi Anakin?