Bad design in Star Wars

[FSTargetDrone]

First off, Luke's speeders lack of visible physical restraints. We'll go with the assumption that there is not AG or inertial dampening field effects for the sake of argument. Could it be that some teenager, who considers himself somewhat of hotshot, thinks safety restraints are uncool? Maybe Ben, who's trying to win the over Luke at the time doesn't want to seem like some uncool old guy and doesn't buckle up either. Seriously, how many teens in the 50s, 60s, and 70s thought buckleing up was uncool (Hell, I still have a hard time getting my old man to put on seatbelts).

I seriously doubt the thought of wearing seat belts, if there had been any seatbelts, would have even entered Kenobi's mind. Or if he even had thought about it, I really can't imagine him feeling the need to impress Luke (or anyone else) with how cool he is by not wearing the belt. Luke is a friendly kid, is grateful to Kenobi for saving him and is interested in hearing more about the man. Kenobi really doesn't need to do a whole lot more to earn Luke's respect at that point! I imagine that if something happened that, say, involved the speeder being in an accident, it would have been trivial for Kenobi to save Luke, if not preventing the accident entirely.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

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.

Revenge of the Sith is on TV right now, and I noticed in the fight between Obi-Wan and Grevious that Obi-Wan slid or bounced his blade down to remove Grievous's hands. Granted, he connected initially fairly close to the hands, but it still appears to be possible.

[FSTargetDrone]

Revenge of the Sith is on TV right now, and I noticed in the fight between Obi-Wan and Grevious that Obi-Wan slid or bounced his blade down to remove Grievous's hands. Granted, he connected initially fairly close to the hands, but it still appears to be possible.

Here is a fairly decent quality clip of that:

[Lord Relvenous]

The angles of that move seem of to me. Kenobi's blade is blocked by Grevious' blade, which means that it is farther away from Grevious than Grevious' own blade. Then when Obi-Wan slides down the blade he managed to cut off the whole hand past the wrist. Even with a amount of changing the blade orientation, Kenobi should only have been able to get maybe half the hand. For that cut to work, Kenobi's blade would have to be inside the guard of Grevious, which it obviously isn't. Or is my thinking incorrect?

[nightmare]

Revenge of the Sith is on TV right now, and I noticed in the fight between Obi-Wan and Grevious that Obi-Wan slid or bounced his blade down to remove Grievous's hands. Granted, he connected initially fairly close to the hands, but it still appears to be possible.

He cut off the first one from inside Grevious's guard. With the second one, he did slide a short distance along the middle of Grevious's saber before it stopped as the pressure increased (in fact, it could be a visual illusion that there was any sliding at all while they were contacted. The slide could have happened immediately before actual contact). He was already inside of Grevious's guard, that pressure was just a feint to make the general block against it from the wrong direction. Then he disconnected to make the sweep down to cut off the second hand. Going by the evidence so far, I have to say that sliding is only really possible while using light pressure between two lightsaber beams, or perhaps, with very superior strength if you use higher pressure. There's definitely sticking going on between beams. Also, there's no question who of them is the better swordsman.

[nightmare]

(Can't edit at this point)

The Theed power core.

Or how about the landing platforms on Coruscant? Oddly enough, they seem to feature rails at the curved corners, but not along the straight sides.

Granted, that was a high-altitude VIP platform...probably a bit unusual. Let's look at a more heavily-trafficked, common-people area, like where Anakin and Padme board the freighter for Naboo:

Nope, no handrails there either. The drop isn't "bottomless" but it is easily 100+ meters.

I don't consider any of those particularly damning, having seen real life railroad stations with open tracks and industries with all manners of altitude dangers. It would have been far worse if, say, Padme's balcony had been open. Fair enough, platforms without handrails exist, but only in some cases. An interesting case can be seen on the sanctuary moon where the AT-AT platform has plenty of railing (as does the bunker and Palpatine's throne room), while the shuttle landing platform has none. Starship landing platforms don't seem to have railings as standard.

The argument that I've heard for mechs is that anti-grav vehicles can't pass through theater shields (we see this in TPM, the B-1s are sent in until the shields are down, THEN the AATs charge forward). The thing I don't understand is: why not just use wheeled vehicles if you need ground contact?

Thing is, they have wheeled vehicles like the Juggernaut. I think the only real explanation for using mechs is a cultural one. That said, the legs aren't quite as damning with SW tech as they should be. They're dirt cheap and common, and their weapons often don't have great recoil.

[Simon_Jester]

Did Luke's uncle or anyone else in ANH state why they needed an R2 unit on their farm? I really can't remember right now, but maybe that could give us a clue as to what uses R2s have* besides being astro-mechanics (and doing advanced calculations, R2 is constantly plotting hyperspace jumps).

Considering his beeping, Luke's X-Wing translated that directly onto a small screen, or rather, it got put out on one, we don't know if it got translated or if R2D2 sent the text directly.

*We know that R2D2 is used like the Skywalker's Swiss army knife, but is every R2 unit capable of "picking" locks and cracking enemy computers on a day-to-day basis?

My best guess is that R2D2 was a fairly standard R-series astromech until Anakin Skywalker started fooling around with him. Since Anakin needed a computer hacker/locksmith at least as much as he needed an astromech, he probably wound up refitting R2D2 heavily to act as a support droid for Jedi missions. But the little guy still has the standard R-series casing, so he doesn't look like a custom modified infiltration droid, and people who aren't fully aware of his capabilities may not realize he has the software to support them.

I seriously doubt the thought of wearing seat belts, if there had been any seatbelts, would have even entered Kenobi's mind. Or if he even had thought about it, I really can't imagine him feeling the need to impress Luke (or anyone else) with how cool he is by not wearing the belt. Luke is a friendly kid, is grateful to Kenobi for saving him and is interested in hearing more about the man. Kenobi really doesn't need to do a whole lot more to earn Luke's respect at that point! I imagine that if something happened that, say, involved the speeder being in an accident, it would have been trivial for Kenobi to save Luke, if not preventing the accident entirely.

A lot of people in rural areas take a more laid-back attitude towards vehicle restraints. My best guess is that because the ratio of space to people is high, and the ratio of people to vehicles is high, you take whatever ride you can get, even if it's in the back of a pickup truck. On top of that, speeders aren't going to run into things very often, and there's no obvious reason they should tend to roll over if they take a tight turn. So the seatbelts may not come up as often as they would normally.

[Serafina]

My best guess is that R2D2 was a fairly standard R-series astromech until Anakin Skywalker started fooling around with him. Since Anakin needed a computer hacker/locksmith at least as much as he needed an astromech, he probably wound up refitting R2D2 heavily to act as a support droid for Jedi missions. But the little guy still has the standard R-series casing, so he doesn't look like a custom modified infiltration droid, and people who aren't fully aware of his capabilities may not realize he has the software to support them.

Well, it is canon that R2-D2 was already heavily modified by the Naboo.
But yeah, Anakin propably added a lot of stuff.

[FSTargetDrone]

I don't consider any of those particularly damning, having seen real life railroad stations with open tracks and industries with all manners of altitude dangers.

And yet, we could put protective barriers at the edges of train platforms. Of course, we'd need to account for the spacing of the train cars' doors and openings or gates in the barrier. You'd also have to install some kind of barrier that could accommodate the train not always stopping at exactly the same spot on the tracks, putting the door opening and the platform barrier opening out of alignment, hindering people from getting on or off.

But we don't put barriers up at the edges of train platforms. It's another expense and a movable barrier or gate is an additional expense. Then it has to be maintained. I mentioned train/road intersections earlier in the thread--instead of crossing the road directly, we could put every rail line that intersects a road on a bridge overhead which pretty much eliminates all car/train collisions. But it'd be very expensive and probably not worthwhile to redesign and rebuild all the train crossings that are at road level, especially on lightly-traveled lines that might see a train only a few times a day.

Hell, we could put fencing all along and even over every rail line in the country where people are likely to be nearby. Imagine, a tunnel of wire-mesh fencing covering every mile of rail, with just enough room inside to allow the train to pass. It would reduce the numbers of people from wandering onto the tracks, whether they are near a station or not. It would be safer, but also very expensive, as well as a pain in the ass for track maintenance workers.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, it is canon that R2-D2 was already heavily modified by the Naboo.
But yeah, Anakin propably added a lot of stuff.

OK, so step one owner back: R2D2 was modified as a special infiltration droid by the Naboo security forces. Anakin just thought it would be cool to give him rocket boosters too, or whatever.

Same basic concept: R2-D2 has a lot of features a normal astromech doesn't, because any astromech is supposed to be highly customizable. They have lots of computing power and some basic technical tools, and then you add on whatever else you feel is appropriate. Which, in this case, was a bunch of special commando attachments.

[Thanas]

Hell, we could put fencing all along and even over every rail line in the country where people are likely to be nearby. Imagine, a tunnel of wire-mesh fencing covering every mile of rail, with just enough room inside to allow the train to pass. It would reduce the numbers of people from wandering onto the tracks, whether they are near a station or not. It would be safer, but also very expensive, as well as a pain in the ass for track maintenance workers.

Japan and Germany do this (and use a lot of overpasses as well) in the new tracks - reason being that cleaning up suicidal people takes a lot of time and money. Also, when you have trains going 200mph you definitely do not want anything in their way.

[FSTargetDrone]

Japan and Germany do this (and use a lot of overpasses as well) in the new tracks - reason being that cleaning up suicidal people takes a lot of time and money. Also, when you have trains going 200mph you definitely do not want anything in their way.

Yeah, it's a great idea, but (unfortunately) we don't have nearly the same kind of high-speed rail usage here.

This Wiki article has good pictures of all kinds of pedestrian and vehicle safety equipment found at various crossings all over the world.

[nightmare]

Watching through ROTS again, I can reinforce the idea that landing platforms lack safety railings - I have yet to spot one with safeguards. For example, as Padme takes off to fly to Mustafar, her ship's platform is both unrailed, flat, and high altitude. It's certainly large enough to not be very dangerous though. On the other hand when we switch to see Mustafar, all the walkways including the one Anakin is standing on has railings. But not the platform she lands on there, even though her ship's boarding ramp has saftety steps. Landing platforms without safeguards is an obviously intentional design, for whatever reason.

[Pablo Sanchez]

Going by the evidence so far, I have to say that sliding is only really possible while using light pressure between two lightsaber beams, or perhaps, with very superior strength if you use higher pressure. There's definitely sticking going on between beams.

Lightsaber beams are hot enough to melt structural metals (as observed in the opening scene of TPM) and are clearly incandescent, but that heat is somehow confined to the blade, with very little transfer by convection or radiation. Qui-Gonn's lightsaber can melt a security door on a battleship, but in other scenes his ready position has the blade literally only inches from his face without injury or discomfort. Nor do we see visible heat distortion from lightsabers. There must be some mechanism at work that prevents the lightsaber from transferring heat unless it interacts with a solid object, and it's likely the same mechanism that makes it "stick" to other lightsabers and allows it to reflect blaster bolts.

[Simon_Jester]

Watching through ROTS again, I can reinforce the idea that landing platforms lack safety railings - I have yet to spot one with safeguards. For example, as Padme takes off to fly to Mustafar, her ship's platform is both unrailed, flat, and high altitude. It's certainly large enough to not be very dangerous though. On the other hand when we switch to see Mustafar, all the walkways including the one Anakin is standing on has railings. But not the platform she lands on there, even though her ship's boarding ramp has saftety steps. Landing platforms without safeguards is an obviously intentional design, for whatever reason.

Suggested principle:

We see railings in places that are used for recreation, for large amounts of pedestrian traffic, and such. We do not see railings in structures still under construction (much of the Death Star) or industrial facilities where most of the workforce is droids anyway; droids being relatively unlikely to blunder off a cliff and replaceable even if they do.

Makes sense to me. People bother to install railings where they see a serious danger that someone of consequence will fall in, and not where they don't. Without a Galactic equivalent of OSHA enforcing uniform standards, some people skimp on railings.

[Serafina]

Well, it is canon that R2-D2 was already heavily modified by the Naboo.
But yeah, Anakin propably added a lot of stuff.

OK, so step one owner back: R2D2 was modified as a special infiltration droid by the Naboo security forces. Anakin just thought it would be cool to give him rocket boosters too, or whatever.

Same basic concept: R2-D2 has a lot of features a normal astromech doesn't, because any astromech is supposed to be highly customizable. They have lots of computing power and some basic technical tools, and then you add on whatever else you feel is appropriate. Which, in this case, was a bunch of special commando attachments.

Ther rocket boosters are most likely standard for astromech droids - they are VERY handy when you have to navigate in space (to repair a ship).
And the Naboo most certainly did not modify R2 for usage as a "infiltration droid" - each and every one of the tools he used for fighting has a usefull, civilian application.

spraying oil: He propably needs that for some machinery he repairs, or even for himself, as lubrication. Its just aq build-in oilcan.
shooting lightning: can be used for welding
various sharp tools: Obviously usefull for cutting stuff, like hatches or wires

and everything i forgot propably has similar civilian applications.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Ther rocket boosters are most likely standard for astromech droids - they are VERY handy when you have to navigate in space (to repair a ship).

Maybe for some, but not the R2 model. I've recently been looking over my Saga Edition D20 SWRPG books and your post brought to mind a line from The Force Unleashed Campaign Guide. It's on page 104, first paragraph for the description of the Q7 Series Astromech. It talks about how the repulsorlift propelled Q7 was an experiment and has this to say on R2's jets: "Indeed, the company's efforts to give R2 models even limited flight ability with aftermarket leg-jets resulted in devices that broke down more often than they worked, forcing the manufacturer to stop supporting the flight accessories."

[Simon_Jester]

Ther rocket boosters are most likely standard for astromech droids - they are VERY handy when you have to navigate in space (to repair a ship).
And the Naboo most certainly did not modify R2 for usage as a "infiltration droid" - each and every one of the tools he used for fighting has a usefull, civilian application.

[talks about how R2 fights with repair tools]

I think you misunderstood. I did not say R2D2 was armed as a battle droid, with blasters, heavy armor, shields, or other specialized weapons. I said he was equipped as an infiltration droid. The fact that he's so good at helping small teams of commandos/Jedi hack their way through secured facilities is a sign that he has special capabilities along those lines; normal droids generally can't do that so easily.

There's a difference between an infiltration droid, an assassin droid, and a battle droid. R2 is the former; the fighting is up to the soldiers accompanying him. And the difference between an infiltration droid and a normal droid is going to be largely in the software, not the hardware. That's especially true because an infiltration droid may be needed for covert operations where a droid with lots of military-grade hardware would be conspicuous.

So I'm convinced that someone at some point decided to make R2 into something suitable for use as a technical specialist for supporting commando raids. Could have been the Naboo, could have been Anakin; I don't know. But if he'd never been designed or modified to be anything more than a spaceship grease monkey, he wouldn't do infiltration and hacking so well.

[Darth Tanner]

they are VERY handy when you have to navigate in space

I would have thought rockets that face one way and have no other means of navigation would be incredibly dangerous for moving around in space due to the risk of zooming off into the void. The only manoeuvrability he'd have would be moving his actual legs which would be of limited use for decelerating or turning round quickly.

R2 and the other R droids seem to have no problems just using their presumably magnetic feet on the Queens yacht.

The fact that he's so good at helping small teams of commandos/Jedi hack their way through secured facilities is a sign that he has special capabilities along those lines; normal droids generally can't do that so easily.

How so? We never see him do anything 'infiltrator' like. He can access computers but we never see him break open a security door or do anything a standard issue maintenance/navigator droid couldn't.

But if he'd never been designed or modified to be anything more than a spaceship grease monkey, he wouldn't do infiltration and hacking so well.

Such as? We never see him hack anything! The Death Star computer gave him information but he couldn't get anything that was encrypted. He couldn't get into the Endor bunker or override the door the blocked him following Luke on Bespin. He turned off some machinery at the Geonosis factory, but industrial machinery usually has kill switches anyway. The only special thing we see R2 do is when Anakin and Obi expect him to be able to deactivate the ray shields when they are captured, although we don't know if he is actually able to do this.

Overall he seems to be like bringing a toolbox on a mission rather than bringing an infiltrator.

I think the only real explanation for using mechs is a cultural one.

Able to handle more rugged terrain than wheeled vehicles (stepping over a wall instead of bashing through it). Higher firing location for line of sight weapons.

spraying oil

I always assumed he was spraying them with the fuel for his rockets, but oil works just as well.

[VF5SS]

Able to handle more rugged terrain than wheeled vehicles (stepping over a wall instead of bashing through it). Higher firing location for line of sight weapons.

Man I swear Star Wars is the only universe where people argue for giant robots. Do you honestly believe with the technology to make things from the size of cars to whole cities blocks float that they really need complex vehicles with legs? Even with the supposed limitations of repulsorlifts, wouldn't it be easier to have them supplement wheeled or tracked vehicles? And even if you did need a higher firing location, wouldn't the simpler solution just be to make the weapon or the vehicle itself a little taller?

[Darth Tanner]

Man I swear Star Wars is the only universe where people argue for giant robots.

Are you forgetting pretty much every cartoon Japan ever made? Atleast ATATs dont have giant hands to hold swords with.

Do you honestly believe with the technology to make things from the size of cars to whole cities blocks float that they really need complex vehicles with legs?

Apparently SW anti-grav technology has two big limitations, you can't go through a shield with one and you it won't work at all on some planets. When your packing your star destroyers with your forces of doom which do you pack?

[VF5SS]

Are you forgetting pretty much every cartoon Japan ever made? Atleast ATATs dont have giant hands to hold swords with.

I meant more the fans.

Apparently SW anti-grav technology has two big limitations, you can't go through a shield with one and you it won't work at all on some planets. When your packing your star destroyers with your forces of doom which do you pack?

Then use some form of conventional VTOL.

[Captain Seafort]

Or your bog-standard wheeled or tracked vehicles, such as the Juggernaut.

[Batman]

Or tracked/wheeled vehicles as already mentioned. Heck as repulsers seem to work fine once you're INSIDE the shield (don't tell me those snowspeeders-or the probe droid, for that matter-flew via aerodynamic lift) roll your hover vehicles through the shield on tractor trailers and activate them once they're safely under the shield. Yes, a bit tricky in a hot LZ, but there was plenty of time for that on Hoth.

[Isolder74]

How so? We never see him do anything 'infiltrator' like. He can access computers but we never see him break open a security door or do anything a standard issue maintenance/navigator droid couldn't.

Yes we have.

Opened the door to the Falcon ESB

Hacked the files on the Falcon's Hyperdrive

Using the Bunker in Jedi as an example is bad because he got shot before he even got started.

Only after Han and Luke broke into the detention center did R2 have any trouble looking things up. He was able to look at the Prisoner Files. You think that isn't restricted?